
THIS BUST OF LINCOLN WAS MADE BY MAX BACHMANN, SCULPTOR, 

FOR THE REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 

AND WAS EXECUTED IN THE SPRING OF 19()9. THE 

ORIGINAL IN BRONZE IS AT THE CLUB-HOUSE. 






ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED AT THE LINCOLN 
DINNERS OF 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



IN RESPONSE TO THE 
TOAST 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

1 887- 1 909 



PRIVATELY PRINTED 
FOE 

The Republican Club of the City of New York 
1909 






Uncofni 



tWt 



Copyright, 1909 

BY 

The Eepublican Club of the City of New York 



This Edition is limited' to five hundred copies, 
of which this copy is 



Nnmher 




/o 



CONTENTS 

ADDRESSES BY— „ 

Page 

Joseph R. Hawley 7 

William M. Evarts 17 

Horace Porter 27 

Shelby M. Cullom 37 

H. L. Wayland 47 

G. E. Strobridge 61 

Robert G. Ingersoll 71 

John P. Newman 81 

John M. Thurston 89 

Chauncey M. Depew 101 

Melancthon W. Stryker iii 

Albert J. Beveridge 127 y 

Howard Duffield 141 

Robert G. Cousins 153 

John N. Baldwin 167 

James W. Gleed 179 

Frank S. Black 205 

Hamilton W. Mabie 215 

Jonathan P. DoUiver 229 

Horace Porter 245 ■/ 

Oliver 0. Howard 257 

James H. V/ilson 271 

Morris Sheppard 279 

Charles E. Hughes 29r 

Theodore E. Burton 301 

Booker T. Washington 317 

APPENDIX: 

Benjamin Harrison 329 

William McKinley 333 

Theodore Roosevelt 341 

Hannibal Hamlin 355 



PREFACE 

On the 12tli day of February, 1887, The Repuhlican Club of the 
City of New York held its first banquet to commemorate the birth 
of Abraham Lincoln, and on each succeeding year the event has 
been fittingly observed. The function is now one of the largest 
of its kind held in the United States and has assumed proportions 
of National significance. 

The orations here published, in response to the toast of "Abra- 
ham Lincoln," were delivered by men distinguished for their elo- 
quence, prominent in our National life and many of whom were 
personally acquainted with Lincoln. Their speeches, therefore, 
add valuable material and new and important facts to Lincoln 
literature. 

In the Appendix will be found speeches delivered at the Lincoln 
Dinners by former Presidents of the United States — Harrison, Mc- 
Kinley and Roosevelt — and by Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's 
Vice-President. 

This volume is published in the hope that the lessons of Lincoln's 
life, so eloquently portrayed in its pages, may prove an inspiration 
to the readers, and add to the love, respect and admiration that the 
world has always manifested for the far-seeing, lovable spirit of 
our martyred President, Abraham Lincoln. 

CHAELES H. YOUNG, 

President. 
April 15th, 1909. 



THE FIRST 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of tte 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1887 



Address of 
HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 



JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLEY, LL.D. 

Senator Hawley was born in Stewartsville, S. C, 
1826, but spent his early life in New York and Con- 
necticut. He graduated from Hamilton College, 1847; 
was admitted to the Bar but gravitated to journalism 
and became an ardent Abolitionist and one of the 
founders of the new Republican party. He was part 
proprietor of the Hartford "Courant." He enlisted at 
the outbreak of the Rebellion and was brevetted a 
major-general in 1864, taking part in many important 
battles of the Virginia campaigns. In i865 he was 
elected Governor of Connecticut. In 1868 he was presi- 
dent of the Republican National Convention that nom- 
inated Grant for the presidency. He was elected Con- 
gressman for the First Connecticut District, and in 1881 
U. S. Senator from that State. He was president of the 
Centennial Commission in 1876. 



ADDRESS OF 



HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 



I am profoundly fateful for the cordiality of your greeting. 
Three days ago I received notice that this evening I was to address 
what I understood was the Young Men's Republican Club of New 
York, and that I would be expected to say something concerning 
Abraham Lincoln. I have had no leisure hour since that time — no 
hour of entire peace and quiet, save those spent in sleep. It is not 
given to every man to have entire leisure for study, reflection and 
penmanship — like our friend Depew, who doubtless has a thor- 
oughly-prepared speech. His lateness in arrival was certainly sus- 
picious. 

I thought it was a young men's Republican club, and it is; 
for we are^ a few of us, at this moment, looking into the mirrors; 
and a man is as old as he feels; a woman, perhaps, as old as she 
looks. We are feeling young to-night, and I had (thinking the in- 
vitation a compliment to my youth) many things in my mind to 
say concerning the pleasure that I feel in hearing of the organiza- 
tion of young men's Republican clubs in several of the New Eng- 
land States and elsewhere. It is getting to be a fashion with us in 
New England — in Rhode Island and in Connecticut especially — 
that the really young men, the boys of twenty-one, twenty-five, 
thirty and thirty-five, should organize young men's Republican 
clubs, taking up the glorious traditions that have come down to 
them from the history of the last twenty-five years, and prepar- 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



ing to make the future as true to whatever is noble and beautiful 
in the idea of the republic as the past twenty-five years have been. 

I was asked to say something concerning Lincoln. Well, sir, 
like all the rest of you, and like the rest of the world, I have been 
thinking of nothing but what was good of Abraham Lincoln. No, 
not all the rest of the world ; but like all of the Republicans. "Why, 
it is only a very few years, it seems to me, since men spoke of 
him in the public prints, habitually, as a "guerilla" ; even sneer- 
ing at him, after his glorious death, as the "late lamented" — that 
being the favorite phrase of a great metropolitan journal at one 
time; and there were men who called him "uncouth," "coarse," 
"brutal," "ignorant," and "rail-splitter" in jest and not in honor. 
But all that has gone by now, and there is not in the civilized 
world a voice or a pen that does not place Abraham Lincoln among 
the foremost of the world's history — not one — and it has become 
the fashion, even among our friends, the enemy, to speak of him 
with respect. 

I have here Abraham Lincoln's biography, as written by him- 
self, about thirty years ago, for Larman's Dictionary of Congress: 
"Born February 12, 1809" — well, he would not be the oldest of our 
dear old friends if he were with us now — "in Harden County, 
Kentucky. Education defective. Profession, lawyer. Have been 
a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war." What is a 
captain nowadays? The distinguished man is a private! "Post- 
master at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois 
Legislature" — Hew York men don't think much of that — "and 
was a member of the lower house of Congress. Yours, &c., Abra- 
ham Lincoln." 

Well, there has been an addition made to that biography since 
that time. "Education defective." I suppose that there are still 
people in the world who will say that Abraham Lincoln was de- 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 



fective in what is called culture. He had none of the advantages 
that the salon gives to men. There were no gatherings of intel- 
lectual, trained, travelled and experienced people to improve his 
manners or his language; yet none since Socrates has spoken like 
him; and there have been very few in all the world's history whom 
the common people heard more gladly. 

What was it, then, that made Abraham Lincoln one of the 
men who, in truth and justice, was of the very finest human cul- 
ture known to mankind ? Let the eminence to which he attained, 
the power he had over men, the almost divine sagacity with which 
he led them — let these things, then, be an encouragement to all 
men who believe in the possibility as well as the necessity of pop- 
ular government in the coming ages of the world. 

Abraham Lincoln had a profound faith in the people. Oh, if 
one of us says, nowadays, that you may in the end trust the peo- 
ple; that it is a magnificent jury; that if you have a good cause and 
will fight for it, and write for it, and talk for it, and preach for 
it, you may trust the great heart of the American people to act 
right finally, there are not lacking men all around Europe, and in 
considerable numbers in the United States, who put up their 
glasses, as I am obliged to do mine, and look at us with curiosity. 

I am not going to read to you at length, but I have here in a 
delicate little volume, selected by the author of "The Man With- 
out a Country" — which was a regiment, a brigade of itself — some 
extracts from what Abraham Lincoln said: 

"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate 
justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the 
world? In our present difference is either party without faith 
or being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with 
His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or 
on your side of the South, then truth and justice will surely pre- 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



vail by the judgment of the great tribunal of the American 
people.'' 

Again: "There are among us those who, if the Union be pre- 
served, will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions 
of population. The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to- 
day ; it is for the vast future also." 

Again: "No men living are more to be trusted than those who 
toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take that which they 
have not honestly earned." Which I believe to be true. 

And in February, 1861 : "I cannot but know what you all know, 
that, without a name" (as that biography shows), "perhaps with- 
out a reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon 
me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of his Coun- 
try; and, so feeling, I cannot but turn and look for that support 
without wliich it v/ill be impossible to perform that great task. 
I turn, then, and look to the great American people, and to that 
God who has never forsaken them." 

I must necessarily speak somewhat disjointedly and from the 
impulse of the moment. My friend on my right, whom I asked 
for an idea, or a point, or a text, said: "Some people say that 
Abraham Lincoln would not be a P^epublican if he were here 
to-day." I wish I felt as sure of my own salvation, or of anything 
else in this world, as I do that Abraham Lincoln would be drift- 
ing along to-day with that indescribable and wonderful thing that 
people call "the spirit of the age." He could not have been any- 
thing else. 

We are Republicans to-day because we inherit the most mag- 
nificent bcdy of tradition that ever was given to a party in the 
world. If I were to live forty years hence I would vote for the 
name. We reconstructed the foundations of the great Republican 
Government. V/e demonstrated that v/lienever anything is to be 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 



done by a whole people it can better be done by a free people 
than by any other people. We demonstrated that all men can 
know more than any one man; which is the foundation of Re- 
publican government. We cleaned out, and cleared out, erased 
and wiped out forever all distinctions, not in race, not in knowl- 
edge, not in ability, but all distinctions between the rights of 
different classes and races of men. 

We have changed European history. We have changed the his- 
tory of the world. For, had we failed, no man knows how far 
backward would have gone, or how many centuries would have 
been delayed, the great Republican experiment. Are there any 
men in this country who love and worship — yea, worship the flag 
as we do? To whom is it sacred if not to us? Are there any 
men in the country who so value the honor — financial and in all 
things — of this country ? 

From whom came these feelings but from the men who, during 
the war, whether in the ranks of the great armies of the re- 
public or in the equally courageous and far-sighted hall of the 
legislators of the republic, who dared to legislate, to trust the 
future, and to trust the people? 

Abraham Lincoln would have been with us to-day not satisfied 
with everything, for I do not know any man who is satisfied with 
everything that has been done, and with everything that is — the 
man who is a Bourbon; he has no hope for the future, and no pur- 
pose of improvement. Lincoln certainly could not have been a 
Democrat. Could he have been a Mugwump? I have some de- 
lightful friends who proudly bear that name. I have no quarrels 
with them. They are gentlemen of culture, of education ; they are 
patriots; they hope the best for their country. I divide them. 
There is the Mugwump who boasts of his departure from his old 
brethren simply upon a difference concerning one man. Well, 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



that election has passed, and I do not see why he should have 
that difference now. In common cases he does not. He had a 
right to entertain that difference. My judgment of the facts was 
altogether different from his; but I am looking to the votes, and 
I will have no controversy with him about an election which 
was over two years ago, if he is right in the future — in Connecticut 
and elsewhere. 

But the term "Mugwump" I have applied with a larger range. 
There are men who are Mugwumps politically, intellectually, scien- 
tifically and religiously. They are pessimists in the whole field of 
the world's thought and activity. They apparently believe in 
nothing. And while the great toiling millions of the world must 
go along the dusty or the alternately muddy highway, doing the 
best they can to carry the burdens of their town, of their state, 
and of their country, to say nothing of their families, there is a 
class of men who sit on the fences and leisurely laugh at us poor 
devils who wear the blue, and have got to get to Gettysburg or 
to Vicksburg by daylight. 

While we are not all religious men, yet we all pray once in four 
years, or oftener, for the flag and for the republic. I have no 
liking for a man who does not believe something; and I feel a 
great hostility toward the man who would take away the belief of 
anybody without giving him something better in return. 

There is a distinguished disbeliever in the United States (but 
I do not come any nearer naming him), who came into the read- 
ing-room of the Riggs House one day. A distinguished gentle- 
man (not of the Republican party, but, on the whole, a very good 
sort of a fellow), who was sitting there and enjoying his morn- 
ing cigar, said to him : 

"Robert" — I beg your pardon, I will not name him — "do you 
see that man crossing the road?" 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 13 

It was a slushy day on the asphalt streets of Washington; he 
wore two crutches; he was honorably entitled to them; and he 
was coming across very carefully. Said he, "Robert, blank you." 

Said Robert, "What do you mean?" 

"Why," said he, "you belong to the class of men that are kick- 
ing away that poor devil's crutches and giving him nothing else to 
help him through this world." And they are Mugwumps. 

I think this is the greatest country, the best country, the most 
promising country, the leading country of the world; the nearest 
to perfection in its constitution, in its laws, in its hopes, and in its 
ambitions; and altogether and in every way the best nation that 
ever lived on the face of the earth. I think it has the best history 
to boast of. I think that if you begin with Washington, come 
down to Adams and Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, 
Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler and Polk even, and old Zach and Fill- 
more, and even Buchanan, to Lincoln and Johnson, and all of them 
to this day, we can challenge any other nation in all the world 
to compare the rulers of a hundred years with us. 

There is no nation, I think, in all the world that has had a 
country so free from great revolutionary and fundamental changes 
as ours has been; although the philosophers make as a favorite 
objection to a democratic form of government that it is subject 
to violent revolutions and unreasonable changes. It is the Re- 
publican party — the Republican party under whatever name it 
may be, whatever changes it may undergo, and whatever possible 
changes of name it may have (although I do not see why any- 
body should throw away the good will of the name) — it is the 
Republican party of the Republic that carries the Ark of the 
Covenant as the instinct of the future — a belief in liberty, justice 
and equality — and the blessed flag that symbolizes all. 



THE SECOND 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY ii, 1888 



Address of 
HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 



WILLIAM MAXWELL EVARTS, LL.D. 

Senator Evarts was born in Boston, Mass, 1818. He 
graduated from Yale, 1837, and after a year of study at 
the Harvard Law School, was admitted to the bar in 
1840. For many years he successfully practised law in 
New York City. He was attorney for the defence in the 
impeachment of President Johnson, and afterwards At- 
torney-General of the U. S. In 1877 he became Secre- 
tary of State, and in 1885 he entered the U. S. Senate. 
He died in 1901. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of tlie Republican Club: I am quite 
sure that you will allow me to count myself with the Club, and 
as one of its members, and not as a stranger by invitation entitled 
to the special courtesies we pay to our invited guests. We are 
all at home here in New York, we honest and earnest Republicans 
of this club, and we rejoice to have the opportunities and the 
means of spreading an inviting feast to eminent public men of our 
party to join in the celebration of that party in its homage to the 
name and the fame of Abraham Lincoln. Your overflowing tables 
and your animated faces and exuberant spirits teach me as well 
as our visitors to look upon you as the examples and the leaders 
engaged in a renovation of the Republican party, and not in any 
lamentation at any of its disasters. 

How great a thing it is that in our generation a political party 
should have furnished to the admiration of the world so great 
a character, so great a conduct, so great a fame, so great an in- 
fluence in this wide world of ours as Abraham Lincoln. Accus- 
tomed to look upon the overspreading fame and influence of Wash- 
ington as incapable of appropriation, in our later politics, to the 
just pretensions and pride of any one party, how great a thing it 
is for our party, — an actual living, leading party of our day, — 
that v/e have produced in the secular order of time a name to match 
that of Washington, and to give a new word to conjure with for 



i8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

American liberty and American independence. The great State of 
the old thirteen had claimed, perhaps, as the chiefest glory of its 
own greatness, that it was the birthplace of Washington ; that its 
great son, the Father of his Country, slept on the banks of their 
own river, the Potomac. Now one of the new States since added 
to the old thirteen, the great State of Illinois, has been lifted up 
out of the whole body of the thirty-eight states and put on the 
same plane and height with old Virginia, as the home and growth 
and scene of the triumph of Abraham Lincoln; and Illinois, in 
the long ages, shall stand out as the State identified with him, as 
Virginia is with George Washington. This glory of these two 
great names, thus now diffused over the whole nation and shared 
between the old and the new States, is to become henceforth, let us 
hope, a new security against discords between North and South, 
East and West, for all alike shall worship at these shrines of lib- 
erty and justice. 

I cannot, Mr. President, speak as in narrative, nor even as in 
illustration, of the wonderful career of this most remarkable Amer- 
ican. I can only ask your attention to the very brief span of 
years which covers his first introduction to the general knowledge 
of his countrymen, and the great stages, so few and so vast in their 
upward rise, to the last solemn culmination of his life in our 
sorrow at his death. Mr. Lincoln, in 1S56, was spoken of in the 
Kepublican party, as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and re- 
ceived, I think, something over one hundred votes for that place; 
but I do not think it is saying too much, as to the country at large, 
that, except among his neighbors in his own State and in the 
neighboring States, this was the first mention of that name on the 
wide theater of public fame of the United States. Two years after- 
ward he was made a candidate, in the purposes of the Ptcpublicans 
of Illinois, as their leader and champion in the campaign then 



ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 19 

opening:, to send him to the Senate of the United States to dis- 
place the power and favor held by Mr. Douglas with the people of 
Illinois. Out of that great contest, in which this somewhat new 
champion of Ilepublican principles of liberty and of duty, was 
matched against the Democratic purposes represented by Mr. Doug- 
las, came the name of Abraham Lincoln to be known almost as 
fully, and as clearly, and as warmly throughout the land, as was 
the young stripling David throughout Judea, after the smooth 
stone from his sling had smitten the giant Goliath. And from that 
step forward you v/iil find in sacred or profane history no more 
wonderful and no more rapid advance in human affairs, than this 
of Abraham Lincoln's since the elevation of the young shepherd 
to be king of Judea, the king that this religious people honor and 
admire as the great king of ancient times. 

Now, wonderful, is it not, that from that first step taken in 1858, 
but two years afterwards he became the leader and the candidate, 
not of a party in the ordinary contests and competitions of politics, 
but the leader of an aroused, and indignant, and resentful na- 
tion against the evil shames into which we had been plunged by 
the Democratic party; and thus he v/as made the leader, not of a 
party, but of a nation that was rising in its power to shake off the 
manacles and fetters that had bound its limbs. Then, from the 
opening of his authority of rule under the Constitution, see how 
everything that he had to do and everything that he did was great 
and noble, and wonderful and nev/. In the first month follov/ing 
his inauguration what more v/onderful bugle-note was ever blown 
by human breath than that v/hich caiied upon the people of the 
United States who loved their country and were loyal to its insti- 
tutions, to ccme out in arms to suppress a rebellion that expected 
to be triumphant by our negligence and indifference! Upon this 
same great summons behold how swiftly, covering this great coast 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



of ours from the capes of Delaware to New Orleans and Galveston, 
and on the Pacific Coast, the whole sea was crowded with ships 
to enforce a blockade that the world had never dreamed of as 
possible of enforcement. And so on, step by step, the great army 
of citizen soldiers grew, and the zeal and the fervor and the pa- 
triotic sacrifices of the nation marshaled the manhood of the 
country, and marshaled the wealth of the country, all to be poured 
into the lap of the great Government and placed at its service 
to preserve for all this people, the American nation, with its con- 
stitution unpolluted and its territory unmutilated. Great occur- 
rences in the history of the world ! The example is set, and here- 
after the people may rest secure without an army and without a 
navy when it is known that a people like this, when their honor 
or their interests are struck at by intestine or by foreign foes, is 
able to array on battlefields and to display on the wide ocean 
enough of warlike power to meet the warfare of the world. But 
see how all this material pride and power was but the attendant 
and the servant, as it has been from the beginning, but the min- 
ister of the great design of Providence, of whom Abraham Lin- 
coln was the trusted instrument. Then we come to the greatest 
act in the history of our world of personal influence in its affairs, 
the emancipation, by the pen of a ruler, of the millions of the 
enslaved fellow-countrymen of ours. And to crown all, to make 
that fact permanent and constitutional, that had been justified and 
was needed as a step in the war, he lived to see a proclaimed peace 
not over a subjugated people, but over a suppressed rebellion. 

By a happy inspiration given to few orators, Abraham Lincoln 
did what no orator since Pericles' time has been able to do — that 
is, to add one exhilarating and ennobling thought to the ever mem- 
orable oration which Pericles delivered over the dead of Greece 
that died for Greece. Every scholar that has read that perfect 



ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 



piece of patriotic feeling and eloquent truth of the Greek orator, 
must admit that Abraham Lincoln's single phrase, at Gettysburg, 
"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, 
but it can never forget what they did here," will live with the 
splendid rhetoric of Pericles. 

Now, what was there, in the future of his life, of great historic 
fame, of great and arduous yet completed and triumphant duty, left 
for Abraham Lincoln to live for and to do? There might be much 
else for this country that he should have survived for, but who 
that looks at a rounded and complete character and fame but must 
recognize that there was nothing left for him in the stages of hu- 
man greatness and of grades of perpetual homage from mankind, 
but that this great chosen and triumphant leader should be made a 
martyr? Was there anything left in the role of human glory to 
crown that of Abraham Lincoln after he had received the surrender 
of the rebellion and the acclaim of the nation as its savior, but 
that he should receive the consecrating crown of a martyr? And 
this consecration came about, this blow of malice and treason 
struck down Abraham Lincoln, on the day of all the year, the day 
which we celebrate as Good Friday, the day the Savior fell. Can 
we then fail to associate — who in Christendom, in the hearts of 
the religious and Christian people of the world but must asso- 
ciate — this death of Lincoln, the martyr for liberty and the hopes 
of civil institutions for man, with that dreadful day of the cru- 
cifixion ? That was a sad night for this country to be sure, when, 
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he lost all consciousness 
to things of earth. He slumbered through that long, sad night, 

"But when the sun in all his state, 
Illumed the Eastern skies, 
He passed through Glory's morning gate, 
And walked in Paradise." 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



But it is not wholly to-day that we are to celebrate the mem- 
ory of Lincoln. This marvelous history of an American boy, ended 
at the age of fifty-six, tells a story that belongs to the whole 
world. For us, gathered here, his example, his lessons are to be 
accepted for practical duties and practical objects by the great 
political party that shares with him the glories of his achieve- 
ments, as he did of ours. It is in that name and by that sign that 
the Republican party expects now to take up and carry forward 
the great and continual, and let us hope perpetual, growth and ele- 
vation, and exaltation of the American people, purged of all that 
human nature below the skies may hope to miss, as it goes on 
step by step; but not, let me remind you, Republicans of New 
York, by belittling or explaining away the greatness of Lincoln 
and the greatness of the Republican party. Who would think 
that, under the exigencies of political agitations and political 
aspirations, we should come to find in great numbers of our coun- 
trymen a disposition to belittle and defame the greatness of those 
achievements and the wonderful credit that attends them all? Or, 
that the nation in the next following generation should think 
that it was irksome and tedious to renew and perpetuate those 
feelings, which arouse and animate us in the discharge of our 
duty? 

Let us then be true to ourselves. By our next election we are 
to launch our Government with a new President for the first 
term, upon our second hundred years. We are bound to trust it 
only with men and with principles, and with courage, and with 
patriotism that can be followed in the coming century, and long 
after, in the path that is illuminated by the public virtues of 
Washington and of Lincoln. Does not every Republican that de- 
serves the name kindle with new feelings and with new purposes 
whenever the name and the birthday of Lincoln are mentioned? 



ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 23 

Have we anything to explain or to explain away ? Do we want to 
put any new glosses and any new interpretations on the triumph- 
ant period of the Republican party and the culminating fame 
of Abraham Lincoln? Do you wish to send it out to European 
nations that the sober second thought of the American people 
is a little disposed to call that a period of enthusiasm which all 
Republicans know was, from the beginning to the end, and from 
the common soldier and the common voter up to Abraham Lin- 
coln and the great generals and the great statesmen about him, 
an honest, and a noble, and an unflinching, and an inflexible pur- 
pose that this country of ours should be independent and free, able 
to take care of our industries, our prosperity, our character and 
our conduct in the face of the world ? Where are those idle and 
frivolous trumpeters of the subsequent fame of another party? 
Some unwise but apparently well-wishing friend of the President 
has thought it a good thing to bring the two names of the Pres- 
ident of the day and the great President of our time, Abraham 
Lincoln, together for comparison. Who raised this comparison? 
Did any Democrat ever think it worth his while to put those two 
names together? Did any Republican ever wish to do it? Who 
under Heaven dared to do that injury to the living President, 
thus to reinflame the enthusiasm for the great dead whose birth- 
day we celebrate? 

Now, the solemn character of Lincoln, shown by his pious 
phrases and his sober reverence, brings us to this as the wisdom 
of the sacred Scripture: "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the 
Lord directeth his steps." Abraham Lincoln, in his honest heart, 
devised his way that he would serve his country — that he would 
serve humanity, that he would serve it in peril, serve it in pros- 
perity, serve it for the country, serve it for the world; but the 
Lord directed those steps that he could not foresee, could not 



24 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

imagine; the Lord directed his steps, and there was no crown 
for him but that which should lift him into the higher sphere 
of nearness to the God whom he revered and worshipped. And 
now, the undiscovered country which the steps of Abraham Lin- 
coln now traverse, and toward which all our steps tend, is crowded 
with heroes and martyrs, servants of their time, prophets and 
great captains in the service of truth; but we must all reverently 
feel that among those majestic shades there is found, and not 
the least among them, the august form and glory of Abraham 
Lincoln. 



THE THIRD 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1889 



Address of 
GEN. HORACE PORTER 



GENERAL HORACE PORTER, LL.D. 

General Porter was torn at Huntingdon, Pa., in 1839. 
He was educated at the Lawrence Scientific School and 
at West Point, graduating from the latter in i860. He 
served throughout the Civil War, winning every com- 
missioned grade up to brigadier-general and receiving 
a Congressional medal of honor for gallantry at Chicka- 
mauga. From 1897- 1905 he was U. S. Ambassador to 
France. In 1904 he received the Grand Cross of the 
Legion of Honor. He is the author of several books, 
the best known being "Campaigning with Grant." 
He has been the orator on many notable occasions, 
among others at the Inauguration of Washington Arch, 
New York, May 4, 1895; the dedication of Grant's Tomb, 
New York, April 7, 1S97; the Inauguration of the 
Rochambeau Statue, Washington, D. C, May 24, 1902; 
Centennial of the foundation of the U. S. Military 
Academy at West Point, June 11, 1902. In 1905 he re- 
covered the body of John Paul Jones at his own ex- 
pense, and had charge of its reinterment at Annapolis. 
He is a member and officer of many important patriotic 
and learned bodies, and was a delegate to The Hague 
Peace Conference of 1907. 



ADDRESS OF 

GENERAL HORACE PORTER 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: I am oppressed with divers mis- 
givings in being called upon to rise and cast the first firebrand into 
this peaceful assemblage^ which has evidently been enjoying it- 
self so much — up to the present moment. From the Herculean 
task accomplished by the Republican party last fall, we have 
learned to look upon its members as men of deeds and not of 
words — except the spellbinders, and when I am called upon to 
initiate these proceedings by words, I am reminded of the days 
when Pythagoras of Athens inaugurated his school of silence, and 
Phryne made the opening speech. 

I fear your committee is treating me to-night like one of those 
toy balloons that are sent up previous to the main ascension to 
test the currents of the air, but I hope that in this sort of bal- 
looning I may not be subjected to the remark that interrupted the 
Fourth of July orator in the West while he was tickling the 
American Eagle under both wings, delivering himself of no end of 
platitudes, and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of fancy, 
when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on 
throwin' out his ballast in that way, the Lord only knows where 
he'll land." 

Perhaps I can assist in demonstrating to-night that dryness is 
a pronounced quality of the champagne, of the diners, and of 
these opening remarks. I have partaken in a very conservative 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



manner, however, of that beverage, in consequence of the remark 
that Mr. Lincoln once made about it when he arrived at City 
Point, after having been shaken up the night before aboard his 
boat in a storm on Chesapeake Bay, and complained that his 
stomach was still suffering from certain gastronomic uncertain- 
ties. A young staff officer, who was generally too previous on 
momentous occasions, now saw before him the one great opportu- 
nity of his life, and rushed up to Mr. Lincoln with a bottle of 
champagne and said: "This is the cure for that sort of an ill, 
Mr. President." Said the President: "No, young man, I have 
seen too many fellows seasick ashore from drinking that very 
article." 

When the Italian fisherman puts out to sea, he is accustomed 
to offer up a prayer for strength, because the sea is so vast and 
his bark is so small, and I feel like entering a plea for strength 
to-night, because the subject which you have assigned to me is 
so vast and my ideas are so few. The story of the life of Abra- 
ham Lincoln savors more of romance than reality; is more like a 
fabled tale of ancient days than the story of an American citizen 
of the nineteenth century. As light and shade produce the most 
attractive effects in a picture, so the strange contrasts, the sin- 
gular vicissitudes in the life of our martyred President surround 
him with an interest which attaches to few men in history. Of 
humble origin, he early had to struggle v/ith the trials of mis- 
fortune and to learn the first lessons of life in the severe school 
of adversity. He sprang from that class which he always alluded 
to as the "plain people." He always possessed an abiding confi- 
dence in them; he always retained his deep held upon their af- 
fections; even when he was clothed with the robes of a master, he 
forgot not that he was still the servant of the people. He be- 
lieved that the government was made for the people, not the peo- 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 29 

pie for the government. He felt that trne Repuhlicanism is a 
torch — the more it is shaken in the hands of the people, the 
brighter it will burn. 

He was transcendently fit to be the first great successful bearer 
of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican party. 

If, in the days of his power, men had sneered at him on ac- 
count of his humble origin, he might well have said to them 
what a Marshal of France, raised from the ranks of Dukedom, said 
to the haughty Nobles of Vienna, who boasted of their long line 
of descent, when they refused to associate with him: "I am an 
ancestor; you are only descendants." 

Abraham Lincoln possessed in a marked degree that most un- 
common of all virtues, common sense. With him there was no 
practicing of the arts of the demagogue; no posing for effect, no 
attitudinizing in public; no mawkish sentimentality; no indul- 
gence in mock heroics; none of that puppyism so often bred by 
power; none of that dogmatism which Johnson said was only 
puppyism grown to maturity. He sought not to rise in a chariot 
of power, the golden dust from whose wheels might dazzle and 
blind his followers. He preferred to trudge along on foot, so 
that the people might keep abreast with him. While his mind 
was one great storehouse of facts and useful information, he made 
no pretense to knowledge he did not possess. He felt like Addi- 
son, that ''pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy in religion — 
a form of knowledge without the power of it." He had nothing 
in common with those men of mental malformation who are edu- 
cated beyond their intellects. 

The names of two Presidents will always be inseparably as- 
sociated in the minds of Americans — Washington and Lincoln. 
And yet, from the manner in which the modem historian loves 
to dwell at length upon trivial incidents, we would suppose that 



3c THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

one had spent his entire life in cutting down trees, and the other 
in splitting them up into rails. These men differed in some re- 
spects. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. 
Lincoln's stories possessed the true geometrical requisites of ex- 
cellence. They were never too long and never too broad. He 
never forgot a point. A sentinel, who was pacing near a camp- 
fire while Lincoln was visiting the field, listening to the stories 
he told, made the philosophical remark that that man had a 
mighty powerful memory but an awful poor forgettery. He did 
not tell a story for the sake of the anecdote, but to point a moral, 
to clinch a fact. I do not know a more apt illustration than that 
which fell from his lips the last time I ever heard him converse. 
We were discussing the subject of England's assistance to the 
South, and how, after the collapse of the Confederacy, England 
would find she had aided it but little, and only injured herself. 
He said, "That reminds me of a barber in Sangamon County. He 
had just gone to bed, when a stranger came along and said 
he must be shaved; that he had a four days' beard on his face and 
was going to a ball^ and that beard must come off. Well, the 
barber reluctantly got up and dressed, and seated the man in a 
chair with a back so low that every time he bored down on him 
he came near dislocating his victim's neck. He began by lather- 
ing his face, including his nose, eyes and ears, stropped his razor 
on his boot, and then made a drive at the man's countenance as 
if he had practiced mowing in a stubble field. He made a bold 
swath across the right cheek, carrying away the beard, a pimple, 
and two warts. The man in the chair ventured the remark, 'You 
appear to make everything level as you go.' Said the barber, 
'Yes, and if this handle don't break, I guess I'll get away with 
what there is there.' The man's cheeks were so hollow that the 
barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor, and the 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 31 

ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man's 
mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clear through 
the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of 
the man's mouth, snapped the blood off it, glared at him and 
said, 'There, you lanterned-jawed cuss, you've made me cut my 
finger.' 

''Now," said Mr. Lincoln, "England will find that she has got 
the South into a pretty bad scrape by trying to administer to her, 
and in the end she will find she has only cut her own finger." 

But his heart was not always attuned to mirth, its chords 
were often set to strains of sadness. The slaughter in the field; 
the depletion in the treasury; the work of traitors in rear as 
well as in front; the foreign complications which arose were 
sometimes so overwhelming that his great soul seemed to melt. 
Men slandered and reviled him; they could not understand him. 
His wit was too keen; his logic too subtle; his statesmanship too 
advanced. It passed their understanding. He realized that "re- 
proach is a concomitant to greatness as satire and invective were 
an essential part of a Roman triumph." He learned that in pub- 
lic life all hours wound — the last one kills. But throughout these 
periods of gloom he never lost the courage of his convictions; he 
never took counsel of his fears. When hope was fading, when 
courage was failing, when he was surrounded on all sides by 
doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented 
Catilines, as the Danes destroyed the hearing of the war horses in 
order that they might not be affrighted by the din of battle, so 
Abraham Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all doubts and despondency, 
and exhibited an unwavering and unbounded faith in the jus- 
tice of the cause and the integrity of the Union. His was a faith 
which saw a bow of promise in every storm cloud; which saw in 
the discords of the present the harmonies of the future; a faith 



32 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

that can be likened only unto the faith of the Christian in his 
God. 

Men learn little in this world from precept; they learn much 
from example. "The best teachers of humanity are the lives of 
great men." It is said that for 300 years after the battle of Ther- 
mopylffi, every child in the public schools of Greece was re- 
quired to recite from memory each day the names of the three 
hundred immortal martyrs that fell in the defense of that Pass. 
It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education, if every 
school child in America could be taught each day to contem- 
plate the grand character and utter the inspiring name of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. Singular Man! No one can lessen the measure of 
his fame; no one can pluck a single laurel from his brow. Mar- 
velous man ! In all the annals of history, we fail to find another 
whose life was so peaceful, whose nature was so gentle, and yet 
who was called upon to marshal the armed hosts of an aroused 
people; to direct and control the uprising of an entire nation, 
and for four long years to conduct a fierce, a bloody, a relentless 
fratricidal war. In the annals of all history, we fail to find an- 
other whose training was of the cabinet, not the camp, yet who 
died a more heroic death. 

Seldom has it fallen to the lot of man to strike the shackles 
from the limbs of bondmen, and proclaim liberty to a race by a 
single stroke of the pen. Seldom has it fallen to the lot of man 
to die the death of an honored martyr with his robes of office 
still about him, with his laurels fresh upon his brow, at the mo- 
ment of the restoration of his country to peace within her borders 
and to peace with all the world. 

We buried him, not in Roman Pantheon; not in a domed St. 
Paul's ; not in an historic Westminster. We gave him still nobler 
sepulchre. We laid him to rest in the bosom of the soil his efforts 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 33 

had saved. That tomb shall henceforth be the true Mecca of all 
true sons of the Republic; future ages will pause to read the in- 
scription on its portals, and the prayers and the praises of a re- 
deemed and regenerated people will rise from that grave as in- 
cense rises from holy places, pointing out even to the angels in 
heaven where rest the ashes of him who had filled to the very 
full the largest measure of human greatness. 

He has passed from our view. We shall not meet him again till 
he stands forth to answer to his name at rollcall, when the great 
of earth are summoned on the morning of the last great reveille. 
Till then, farewell, gentlest of all spirits, noblest of all hearts! 
A child's simplicity was mingled with the majestic grandeur of 
your nature. You have handed down unto a grateful people the 
richest legacy which man can leave to man — the memory of a 
good name, the inheritance of a great example ! 



THE FOURTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1890 



Address of 
HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 



SHELBY MOORE CULLOM 

Senator Cullom was bom in Wayne Co., Ky., 1829. 
After an academic education he commenced the practice 
of law at Springfield, III. He served in the Illinois 
Legislature, 1856, 1860-61, 1872, 1873-4. He was a 
member of Congress, 1865-71; Governor of the State of 
Illinois 1876-83, and U. S. Senator from Illinois since 
1883. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of the 
City of New York : I esteem it a great honor to be present on this 
occasion, and a still greater honor to be called upon to respond to 
the announcement just made by your president. 

How true the utterance of the matchless Shakespeare of the 
Old World when applied to immortal Lincoln of the New! "The 
elements were so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say 
to all the world, 'This is a man.' " His life was gentle, pure, 
noble, and courageous ; and from his early manhood all who knew 
him were ready to say of him, "This is a man." The name of 
Lincoln, Mr. President and gentlemen, has been to me as a house- 
hold word from my very earliest recollection. He was the friend 
of my father in my early boyhood, and I am proud to believe 
that he was my friend for many years before his death. I knew 
him somewhat in the sacred circle of his family. I knew him in 
the ordinary walks of life. I knew him as a practising lawyer 
at the bar. I knew him at the hustings as a public speaker and 
debater. I knew him as President of the United States, in that 
period in our history when men's souls were tried, and when the 
life of our nation seemed to be suspended as by a thread. In the 
home circle he was gentle, affectionate, and true. In the ordinary 
walks of life he was plain, simple, and generous; a perfect type, 
so far as men can be, of all that makes a worthy citizen of a 



38 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

great Eepublic. At the bar he was conscientious, fair, powerful, 
and he seldom failed to gain his cause against the most able 
legal antagonists. 

On the platform of debate he had few, if any, equals in this 
or any other country. 

Mr. President, the world has had few such men as Abraham 
Lincoln. He was of gentle nature, great in heart, in head, and 
in deed. As a political leader he was actuated in his movements 
by strong convictions of duty, and had great power in convincing 
people of the righteousness of his cause. No man could stand in 
his presence and hear him without feeling sure of the honesty 
of his purposes and declarations, or of the strength of his argu- 
ments in behalf of whatever cause he championed. I have heard 
him often. I heard several of the famous debates between him 
and the great Douglas. I heard his great speech in which he 
uttered, I may say, that immortal declaration, that a house di- 
vided against itself cannot stand. It must be all one thing or 
the other; and I do not believe that an address was ever delivered 
in this country that produced a more profound and lasting impres- 
sion upon the minds of the people of the country than this. 

As Chief Magistrate of the nation, he was wise and prudent. 
He lived to witness that foul blot of slavery, which gave the lie 
to the Declaration of Independence, swept away. He was the 
savior of the Union and the liberator by his own hand of four 
millions of slaves. 

Great-hearted patriot, and martyr to the cause of union and 
liberty, how we honor your name and your memory to-night! You 
fought a good fight. You finished your work. The world is bet- 
ter for your having lived in it, and it will call you blessed as 
long as the love of liberty shall dwell in the soul of humanity, 
which will be as long as time shall last upon the earth. 



ADDRESS OF HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 39 

Mr. President, if I may be allowed to say it, Abraham Lincoln 
was given to the nation by Illinois. It seems to me but yester- 
day that I felt the warm grasp of his hand, and saw him leave 
his home at the capital of his state, where I have the honor of 
residing, to enter upon a larger field of usefulness at the capital 
of the nation, where he won immortality and died v/ith a martyr's 
crown of glory upon his brow. 

Never was a nobler man born of woman, and never throbbed a 
purer heart in human breast. The distinguished of the Old World, 
proud of their claims of long descent, may sneer at his humble 
birth; but, in my estimation, he was one of the greatest of men. 

I do not know, fellow-citizens, but you may think me too partial 
toward that great man; but I have read his speeches, have seen 
him in the common walks of life, walked with him, as my friend 
here said, upon the streets, heard him talked about ever since I 
was ten years old, and I have deliberately come to the conclu- 
sion that no man has ever existed on the American continent 
superior to Abraham Lincoln. 

Ey his consummate statesmanship he saved the republic from 
the evils of anarchy, and with self-denying patriotism refused 
to assume almost regal power when it was within his reach. He 
educated public opinion until it became ready to endorse what 
he knew to be right, and what wise statesmanship demanded at 
his hands. 

Fellow-citizens, if you will think of his career as Chief Magis- 
trate of the nation in that period of national peril, you will 
ag^ee with me that his course and wisdom were such as to lead 
the people, and teach them as though he taught them not, and 
then he did what the country was ready to have done. 

While Abraham Lincoln had not the advantages of a scholastic 
education, yet he fully appreciated and understood the beautiful 



40 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

in sentiment and diction, and no man has uttered more elegant 
language and tender words, touching the hearts of humanity, 
than he. To me his utterances were both powerful and elegant, 
and I would rather be the author of that great paper by which 
he gave freedom to four millions of slaves than be the author 
of the poems of Homer or the plays of Shakespeare, He was the 
savior of the Union, but though he did live to see the power of the 
Rebellion broken, he did not live to see the authority of the 
Union established in all the rebellious States. He was per- 
mitted to go up into Mount Nebo and to catch a glimpse of the 
promised land of the restored "Union, but his weary feet were not 
allowed to cross the border that separated it from the wilderness 
of Civil War. In the very moment of victory he was robbed of 
life by the cruel hand of a traitorous assassin, and his body was 
brought back amid the lamentations of a whole nation — even his 
foes giving to his merit the meed of tears — to find its last resting 
place in the soil of Illinois. As I gazed for the last time upon 
his face on the solemn occasion, sad and gentle in death as it had 
been in life, I thanked God that the good that he had done would 
live after him and give his name in honor to story and to song. 

It is said that the story of every human life, if rightly told, 
may be a useful lesson to those who survive. There are none 
whose lives teach to Americans or to the world a grander or more 
profitable lesson than the life of Abraham Lincoln. The study of 
his life leads to private and public virtue; to correct ideas of our 
relations to each other; and to moral courage to stand by our 
convictions. 

Lincoln was a child of Providence, raised up in a period in our 
history when there was need of such a man. A pioneer raised in 
a cabin, laboring with his hands, acquainted with the woods and 



ADDRESS OF HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 41 

fields, he communed with nature in all its beauty and grandeur 
as it voiced itself to the quiet man of destiny. He was a martyr 
to the cause of union and liberty, a noble victim to duty. 

To repeat the sentiment embodied in the announcement of the 
President, "The fight must go on," and I am glad to the very bot- 
tom of my heart that I have the honor of standing in the presence 
of a great assembly of intelligent, earnest Republicans, who will 
join in that sentiment when I say that the fight must go on. "The 
cause of liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even 
one hundred defeats." Such words uttered by Lincoln, gave evi- 
dence of his convictions to duty. "Yes," said he, "I will speak 
for freedom against slavery so long as the Constitution of our 
country guarantees free speech; until everywhere in this broad 
land the sun shall shine, the wind shall blow, and the rain shall 
fall upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil." 

Mr. President and gentlemen, the fight must go on in favor 
of liberty and justice to the people of all classes, colors, and con- 
ditions in our country until every man in all this broad land 
shall stand equal before the law, in civil and political rights, equal 
in fact and equal in law, with no system of intimidation at elec- 
tions, or fraudulent counting when the polls are closed. 

The fight must go on, and no surrender at the end of one or 
one hundred defeats, until honest elections are secured every- 
where in this country. 

The fight must go on until merciless monopolists are subor- 
dinated, and the interests of the great body of the people are 
carefully regarded. 

The fight must go on until trusts and combinations, prompted 
by greed and inordinate avarice, shall be broken up. 



42 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

The fight must go on until the mission of the Republican party, 
founded by Lincoln and his compeers, shall have been fully ac- 
complished in the destruction of all barriers to perfect equality 
in the civil and political rights of all the people of the country. 

Gentlemen, how glorious the results of the great culminating 
struggle in which Lincoln was the mighty leader on the side of 
liberty! Did you ever reflect upon the consequences of a divided 
Union? Thanks to Lincoln, the great leader; and to that wise 
statesman, William H. Seward of New York, another great leader 
of the Republican party; and to my distinguished friend — and I 
am proud to have him here in your presence to-night — the gallant 
pathfinder and hero of the late war. General Fremont; and to 
Grant, that silent man; and to Sherman; and to Sheridan and 
Thomas; and to Hancock, the gallant leader; and to my dearest 
friend of latter days, the gallant John A. Logan ; and to the great 
army of patriots whom they and others commanded in the strug- 
gle for national life, the dissolution of. the Union was not ac- 
complished. 

How we are blessed as a nation ! No standing army worth the 
name. No royal dynasty in this country. Fellow-citizens, in a 
little while every nation on the American continent, I trust, will 
be in full sympathy with each other, from the frozen regions of 
the North to the lower peninsula of the South. The people sov- 
ereign. No danger from foreign foe. Surrounded by the two 
oceans, the lakes, and the gulf. What an opportunity to build 
up the greatest nation the world ever saw ! 

A career of unprecedented glory awaits this nation. Slavery 
gone. Secession banished, I trust for all time. No gloomy clouds 
to obscure the light. "Let the mystic chords of memory swell 
the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they 



ADDRESS OF HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 43 

will be, by the better angels of our nature," and let us as citizens 
study and imitate the life and character of Lincoln, in its devo- 
tion to liberty, in the hope that the great principle for which 
Lincoln lived and died shall preserve this country as the purest 
and best country on the face of the globe. 



THE FIFTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1891 



Address of 
REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 



HEMAN LINCOLN WAYLAND, D.D. 
Dr. Wayland was a well known clergyman, educator 
and editor. He was born in Providence, R. I., 1830, and 
graduated from Brown University in 1849. The fol- 
lowing year he studied at Newton Theological Institute, 
and in 1854 entered the Baptist ministry. His first 
pastorate was the Main Street Baptist Church, at 
Worcester, Mass. He enlisted at the outbreak of the 
Civil War, and served three years as chaplain of the 
Seventh Connecticut Volunteers. He became Professor 
of Rhetoric and Logic at Kalamazoo College, and later, 
president of Franklin College. From 1872-94 he was 
editor of the "National Baptist" of Philadelphia, Pa. 
He was also engaged in other editorial work and was 
an extensive magazine contributor on sociological and 
educational topics. He was an ardent advocate of Civil 
Service reform, and an able public speaker. He died 
in 1898. 



ADDRESS OF 

REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club : You have 
assigned me a difficult task. You bid me speak of the virtues of 
Abraham Lincoln and the debt due him from posterity ; and I sup- 
pose that you expect me to be through before the rising of the 
sun. Now, if you had asked me to speak of the private and civic 
virtues of Aaron Burr, if you had bidden me speak of the iron 
resolution and uncalculating patriotism of James Buchanan, of 
the nobleness and magnanimity of the sympathy extended us in 
our hour of trial by the nations of the Old World, I could have 
finished the subject far within fifteen minutes, and have had 
twenty minutes to spare! 

Was Abraham Lincoln a great man? History is very apt to 
ask about a man, "What did he do?" As the executive head of 
the nation and as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, 
he carried the country through the most gigantic war of modern 
times, to the achievement of a complete and unsurpassed victory. 
He restored the union of the states, and re-established the na- 
tional authority. He annihilated slavery, which had been 
through all history, our calamity and curse and shame and menace. 

And his work was marred by no drawback. Napoleon, at the 
close of a career of unparalleled splendor, left his country hu- 
miliated, prostrate. Oliver Cromwell died ; and the majestic work 
which he had done was marred, and a wave of reaction swept 



48 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

over the landmarks of liberty which he had erected. But, in 
Lincoln's own words, "When peace came, it came to stay"; and 
with it came and stayed liberty, and every blessing for which 
the war was waged. The Proclamation of Emancipation was 
never revoked. 

Was he a great man? It has been the happy lot of some men 
to achieve a great work without having to contend with obstacles. 
What did he overcome ? How truly did he say, when thirty years 
ago yesterday, amid the tears and prayers of his neighbors, he 
left the home to which he was to return four years later, a war- 
rior who died upon the field of victory — how truly and modestly 
did he say, "I leave you on an errand of national importance, 
attended as you are aware, with considerable difiiculties." Great 
need had he to say to his neighbors, "I hope you will all pray 
that I may receive that divine assistance, without which I can- 
not succeed, but with which success is certain." Never did a 
man enter upon so great a work, attended with obstacles so por- 
tentous. All through the months following his election, the 
enemies of the country had their way; the then President of the 
United States served, as a former Governer of Illinois said, "as 
a bread and milk poultice to bring the rebellion to a head." And 
Lincoln's hands were tied. At last when he took the oath, what 
did he find? The situation was described in a sort of parable 
by a letter which Lincoln himself wrote years before. A business 
house in the East had written asking about the resources of Mr. 
Brown, with whom they had some dealings. Mr. Lincoln replied: 

"I am well acquainted with Mr. Brown, and know his circum- 
stances. First of all, he has a wife and baby; together they 
ought to be worth $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an 
ofi&ce in which there is a table worth $1.50 and three chairs 



ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 49 

worth, say $1. last of all, there is in one corner a large rat-hole, 
which will bear looking into. 

"Respectfully yours, 

"A. LINCOLN." 

When he came to take the inventory of the national assets 
he found in many a home mothers, children, affections, hopes, not 
to he counted by dollars. He found in the national treasury 
a table worth $1.50 and three chairs worth $1, which Floyd and 
Cobb had not carried away — because they were screwed to the 
floor; and he found on the south side of the national premises, 
a large rat hole, which, indeed, would bear looking into, for down 
it had vanished prosperity, honor, justice, and the national ex- 
istence itself was just disappearing, when Abraham Lincoln res- 
cued it; though strange to say, he was criticised because he grasped 
it by the hair of its head. 

He, a country lawyer, found himself called upon to create and 
command an army and navy, to reorganize the national service 
which had become honej'-corabed v/ith treason. He had to con- 
front open enemies with steadfast opposition, to countermine the 
plots of secret foes, and to unite and to re-animate the often 
discouraged friends of liberty. He had to count upon the stead- 
fast opposition of the classes in the Old World, and to reckon 
as his friends, less than half a dozen members of the House of 
Commons, and the plain toiling people, like the weavers of Lan- 
cashire, v/ho, in the agonies of the cotton famine, said to the 
Government, "We will clem a bit longer; but you shall not array 
Great Britain against our brothers in Am.erica, and against him, 
their chief." A few years ago, when spending a Sunday in Lan- 
cashire, I could not resist the impulse to thank these heroic men 
for their friendship in our hours of agony ; I felt that I could stoop 



50 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

and kiss the ground on which those men stood. He had to con- 
tend in the Arena of International Law with the veteran pub- 
licists of England and France; and, while walking, to use his 
own illustration, like Blondin, upon a wire across an unfathom- 
ahle abyss, he had to listen to the angry and querulous complaints 
of those who would urge him forward and of those who would 
hold him back. 

We criticize him now because of the mistakes and the delays. 
We could achieve the same results at much less cost, in much less 
time. Perhaps, yes; because he broke out the path. As well 
might the summer tourist who crosses the ocean inside of six 
days, criticize Columbus for the tediousness and deviousness of 
his voyage, or the men of the Mayflower, because they were 
ninety days from the old Plymouth to the new. 

It demands much more greatness to be the constitutional ruler 
of a free nation in time of peril than to be an absolute monarch. 
The autocrat consults no one. He simply says: "So I will; so I 
order," as the Czar of the Russias marked out the course of the 
railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, by laying down a ruler 
and drawing a straight line on the map. That required no 
genius, no labor; an idiot could have done it. The labor, the 
ability was demanded of the engineers who followed. The mag- 
istrate of a free state has to consult public opinion. He must 
take, not the course that is ideally the best, but the one that 
will command the assent and the co-operation of the legislature, 
and of the people who are behind both ruler and congress. He 
must argue, he must explain, he must pacify, he must win; and 
all this often at the expense of that promptness and secrecy 
which is the life and soul of success in war. Nowhere does the 
greatness of Mr. Lincoln more plainly appear than in the blended 



ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 51 

wisdom, patience, cheerfulness, kindliness, with which he gained 
those whose co-operation was a condition of victory. 

Was he great, judged by what he said? His speeches and 
writings were the embodiment of compact reasoning, expressed 
with homely sense, inspired by humanity, radiant with patriot- 
ism. Is not he a great man who says that which no one has 
ever said before, but which, the moment it is said, everyone rec- 
ognizes as an eternal verity? No one had said, "If slavery is 
not wrong, then nothing is wrong" ; but when he said it, every 
one recognized it as an axiom. If slavery is not wrong, then the 
words "right" and "wrong" cease to have any meaning. His 
words are a lesson to every young man, teaching that the secret 
of great speech is, to have yielded one's self to great impulses. 
He was not often mistaken; but certainly he erred when, in the 
immortal address at Gettysburg, he said, "The world will little 
note nor long remember what we say here." So long as men re- 
member those immortal three days of July; so long as history 
records that there the rebellion reached its high-water mark, and 
that Gettysburg made Appomattox; so long as men shall go on a 
sacred pilgrimage to Bound Top and Devil's Den, to the grove 
where Eeynolds fell, and to the slope up which Pickett made his 
charge (glorious, but for the cause), so long shall men remember 
every word which he spoke, standing under the November sky 
of 1863, words in which human speech makes a near approach 
to perfection; so long men will "highly resolve that government 
of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." 

The great historic party, which in 1860 placed at the head 
of its column Abraham Lincoln, and beside him the illustrious 
man who is your guest this evening, the party which has achieved 
for the Republic such great and beneficent victories as were never 



52 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

achieved by any other party, might well take as its platform 
through all coming time the sentiments and utterances of Lin- 
coln, adapted to the ever varying demands of the hour. 

Of his greatness, we can argue from what he was. Single in 
aim, unselfish, patient, cheerful, not seeking personal ends, doing 
things most disagreeable to himself because he thought they were 
for the welfare of the country; appointing men to high station 
who were personally repugnant to him, because he thought the 
popular voice demanded it; sagacious, honestly shrewd, far- 
sighted, almost unerring in his judgment of events and of men — 
his character was a great part of the strength of the national 
cause, was another army re-enforcing the Army of the Potomac. 
If he had shown in the smallest degree petulance, avarice, fraud, 
personal ambition, it would have been a greater calamity than 
ten defeats like Chancellorsville. The concentration of effort, the 
unity of purpose, which, under a monarchy, would have been se- 
cured by force, came to him solely through the confidence which 
gradually he won. "I have seen," says the most brilliant of 
American essayists, "I have seen the v/isest statesman and most 
pregnant speaker of our generation, a man of humble birth and 
ungainly manners, of little culture beyond what his own genius 
supplied, become more absolute in power than any monarch of 
modern times through the reverence of his countrymen for his 
honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith in God and man, and 
the nobly humane simplicity of his character." 

He had a wise generosity toward his lieutenants. You remem- 
ber that Louis ZIV stayed safely in his palace while a siege was 
being carried on, until the general reported to him that it was 
absolutely certain that the beleaguered city must fall within a cer- 
tain time; and then the Grand Monarch would set out in state 
for the camp, and would arrive just in time to receive the surren- 



ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 53 

dered keys ; and his flatterers said, "Turenne failed sometimes, and 
luxembourg sometimes; but victory always waits upon the steps 
of His Sacred Majesty." And so he pocketed the glory, which of 
right belonged to the planning general and the toiling soldier. 
But never a man gave more generous tribute of praise than Lin- 
coln bestowed upon every one who was enlisted in the national 
cause; and so, like begetting like, it came about that never ruler 
had more noble and uncalculating devotion than he from the 
great-souled army, and especially from those two unparalleled 
leaders, one of whom, five years ago last August, was borne with 
more than royal honors to his grave in the metropolis which he 
loved. The other — how can I trust myself to speak of him? — 
peerless captain, unsullied patriot, a thunderbolt on the field of 
battle, in peace the gentlest of men, the most loving of friends, 
laden with the gratitude, the reverence, the love of a nation, the 
first citizen of the republic, lingers betv/een life and death, 
ready, when the bugle sounds the recall to join the army of the 
immortals. May a kindly Providence still spare him to us and 
lengthen out the golden sunset of his honored day. 

It seems to be a demand of human nature that every great 
cause shall somewhat incarnate itself in a person and a name; and 
so the name of Lincoln came to be, to America, and to all the 
world, the rallying cry, the embodiment of the idea of Liberty and 
Union. Those who sneeringly spoke of the Boys in Blue as "Lin- 
coln's hirelings," spoke more wisely than they knew. "Hirelings" 
they were not; but they were "Lincoln's" just as truly as the 
best soldiers that ever trod the soil of Great Britain were "Crom- 
well's" Ironsides. 

Lincoln was great in that he knew his bounds, and attempted 
nothing which would lead to ruin. 

I cannot call a man great who is not a whole man. Napoleon, 



54 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

colossal upon the intellectual side, had not even the rudimentary 
organs of a moral nature. He was a great half-man. A semi- 
circle is not a circle, even though it have a radius of a million 
miles. In our hero the soul matched the intellect. 

He was a leader, always in front, yet never so far in advance 
as to lose his hold upon those who followed. He did not, like a 
too progressive locomotive, dash ahead and break the coupling and 
leave the train stalled and helpless. 

His vast common sense gave him the grasp of principles and 
made him a master, alike in diplomacy and in war, in everything 
that did not depend upon arbitrary technicalities. 

He was born great, and he became great. He was great when, 
at the age of twenty-two, seeing in the Crescent City, a slave 
woman flogged, he, an obscure flat-boatman on the Mississippi, 
said, "If ever I get a chance at that institution, I will hit it hard." 
He was great when he was hardly known beyond Sangamon 
County. After he became prominent in the nation, Richard 
Fletcher, one of the justices of the Supreme Court of Massachu- 
setts, said to Francis Wayland (from whom I have the incident), 
"Years ago I had some correspondence with him on a legal mat- 
ter; and he reminded me more of John Marshall than any one with 
whom I have ever conferred." He was great, when disregarding 
the counsels of timid friends, on the 17th of June, 1858, in his 
speech accepting the nomination for Senator, he said, "A house 
divided against itself cannot stand." But he grew, and especial- 
ly during those four years when men lived fast. From the cau- 
tious conservator of the Fugitive Slave Law to the author of the 
Emancipation Proclamation, from the inaugural address of 1861 
to that of 1865, there is a progress such as has rarely been meas- 
ured by mortal man. What men call his inconsistency was in 
reality only his growth. 



ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 55 

He was the typical American. He was the product of our soil. 
In forming him, Nature 

Chose sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West; 

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

It will always be the glory of America that she offers a career to 
such men as Lincoln and Grant, who, in monarchical or aristo- 
cratic States, could never have risen to the destiny for which they 
were created. He was the typical American; not Washington; 
Washington was the product of the monarchy under which he 
was born, and, in spirit, belonged to the Old World. Is it pos- 
sible to think of Washington, in a public address, asking, "Shall 
we carry on the war with an elder stalk squirt charged with 
rose-water?" Is it possible to think of Washington, at mid- 
night, dancing about in his chamber, with long, lean legs pro- 
truding from a somewhat abbreviated night-gown, as Lincoln did 
when Stanton carried to him the news from Gettysburg? General 
Washington would have arrayed himself in full regimentals be- 
fore receiving the tidings; or, he would have said, "Mr. Stanton, 
I shall be at the President's office to-morrow morning at 9 o'clock, 
if you have any important communication to make." 

Andrew Jackson was born under a monarchy; anybody might 
know that; and he believed devoutly in the divine right of His 
Imperial Majesty, the Czar, Andrew the First. 

Lonely and sorrowful in his life, Lincoln was fortunate in his 
death. Years could have added nothing to his fame. Wolfe, had 
he lived a hundred years, could never again have fought a battle 
which gave a continent to the English-speaking race. Nelson, 



56 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

had he sailed the seas for many a year, could never again have 
found a fleet of the enemy to annihilate; nor could Mr. Lincoln, 
by any possibility, have had the opportunity to carry his coun- 
try through another war for the national existence, nor was there 
another race waiting to be emancipated. When there remained 
nothing that earth could give, God himself bestowed the honor 
which He reserves for only a few of his most beloved children, 
the crown of martyrdom; and "he went up to heaven" (as O'Con- 
nell grandly said of Wilberforce), "bearing three million broken 
fetters in his hands." 

History has long ago pronounced its award. Venerated by his 
countrymen, worshipped by the race which he freed, honored by 
those who had been his sharpest critics, his name is a spell to 
charm with through the civilized world, calling sleeping nations 
into life, awakening hope in the burdened and oppressed. Pa- 
tiently he waited for victory in life; and it came. Patiently he 
has waited for recognition in death; and it has come. History is 
slow in its advances; but it arrives. 

Those men, if I may call them men, who jeered at him as an 
uncouth backwoodsman, a boor, a clown, a baboon, a gorilla — 
where are they to-day ? Oblivion searches for them in vain ; while 
he, reversing the laws of nature, grows larger and more distinct 
as he withdraws into history. 

He knew to bide his time. 

And can his fame abide. 
Still patient, in his simple faith sublime 

Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 

(and, I may venture to add, some captains not so very great, who 
have only drums, who have left their guns at home,) 



ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 57 



Great captains, with their guns and drums, 

Disturb our judgment for the hour; 
But at last silence comes; 

These all are gone, and standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American. 



THE SIXTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1892 



Address of 



REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 



GEORGE E. STROBRIDGE 

Dr. Strobridge was pastor of the Washington Square 
Methodist Episcopal Church, located at West Fourth 
Street, New York City. He has retired from the min- 
istry. As a preacher and writer he was well known. 



ADDRESS OF 

REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 



Mr. President, Members of the Republican Club and Gentlemen: 
I would be glad to have you all understand that I feel that I 
am at present undertaking a large contract. If you had asked 
me in the brief space of some twenty minutes allotted traditionally 
to an after-dinner speech, to tell you how much the Cleveland 
Democrats loved the Hill Democrats, I could get through in the 
time and have still space to tell just about how much time Senator 
Hill has spent at Washington. And, indeed, I would still have a 
margin out of the twenty minutes to take you up in thought to 
Albany and allow you to listen to the serenade given to the Dem- 
ocratic majority by the sv/eet-faced Mugwumps; but to ask any 
one to do justice to this great subject in this limited time is like 
trying with a pocketknife to cut down one of the great pines of 
California. I have a fancy that you will think when I get 
through the sermon has broken down under the text. There is 
a line which some of us that possibly visit the churches a 
little more than some of the rest of us — have heard occasionally, 
"Though they may forget the singer, they will not forget the 
song." I have a fancy that you will forget presently both the 
singer and the song in this instance. But at all events, I ask 
you to remember what I say, for the sake of the subject I have. 
K you don't recall much of what I say, please to observe that 
I have undertaken at least to speak about a great name. 



62 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

Macaulay, in one of his spasms of asperity, breaks out with 
this remark: "The multitude is more easily interested for the 
most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for 
the most important principle." There are many who will think 
that this observation is as unfair as it is caustic. But, however 
that may be, you, Mr. President, in announcing this toast, have 
just pronounced a name which has always and everywhere a spell 
to charm the multitude, because it is a great name ! a name which 
dignifies us in its utterance, because it is of itself a badge of no- 
bility! a name which stirs always a whirl of enthusiasm, be- 
cause it stands for the incarnation of the most important prin- 
ciples that ever roused a great nation to action or led humanity 
to an advance movement! — the name of Abraham Lincoln, "the 
war President, statesman, patriot; the great and good man!" 

Truth was the pole-star of his mind. His one concern was to 
be guided by it. The right was the only oracle at which he made 
any inquiries. His utterance was free from confusion, because his 
thought was unmixed with any falsehood. When he spoke, you 
recall the maxim, "The clear is the true." 

His mental processes were all logical, and his conclusions were 
rightfully his, because he had travelled in thought all the way 
up to them. With him action was the response to reason rather 
than the product of passion. He could deliberate when smaller 
and excited minds insisted upon action, but no difiiculties could 
discourage nor dangers deter his action when its hour and oppor- 
tunity had arrived. 

Because he reached his conclusions by these legitimate processes 
and knew that he was right, he was absolutely immovable in his 
firmness, and stood amid storms of persuasion like a rock amid the 
hissing but helpless spray. His judgment was of the forecasting 
sort. Beneath his sombre but never stern brow, his calm and 



ADDRESS OF REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 63 

sometimes sad eye took in long reaches of time, and this country 
has not yet outgrown his predictions. 

Great, however, as he was in mind, he was equally great in 
heart. Adversity found him always braced and steadied by an 
unflinching fortitude. Justice to him was sacred as the presence 
of the Deity itself. However men might differ in other respects, 
all were equal in their claim upon justice. To make him con- 
scious of an unjust act would have been to make him conscious of 
exquisite pain. 

He was "Honest Abe" before he became President Lincoln. And 
it is to the credit of the American people that it was largely be- 
cause he was the first that he became the second. When post- 
master at a little cross-road village, he brings forth the old leather 
bag and counts out in triumph to the inspector the last cent due 
to the government. He dismisses untouched any lawsuit in which 
truth declines to be his client. And, as a principle which it were 
well for every tempted lawyer to observe, he has left this 
aphorism: "The law never sanctions cheating and a lawyer must 
be very smart indeed who can twist it so that it will seem to 
do so." 

His heart would swim sometimes to the surface in tears, as over 
the untimely death of Ellsworth. His tenderness made him at- 
tentive to little children, and moved him to leave his busy desk 
and hasten to visit the soldier under sentence of death, talk lov- 
ingly with him and rescue him from his terrible fate. When but 
a stripling, having landed a flat-boat in New Orleans, he chanced 
to witness an auction in that city, and he said: "My heart bled at 
seeing that family separated and sold. My God! if ever I get 
a chance to hit that institution, I'll hit it hard." That was the 
first sentence of the Emancipation Proclamation, given out years 
before the official document was issued. That proclamation broke 



64 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

upon the shore-line of history in clanging bells, falling fetters 
and shouts of free men. But the wave started far back there in 
New Orleans; it began as a silent swell out in the midocean of 
Lincoln's great heart. 

He was an unselfish man. "Wielding almost unlimited power, 
no one suffered wantonly at his hands or from a personal motive. 
At the opening of his second administration, he said, "While I 
am deeply sensible of the high compliment of a re-election, it 
adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be 
pained or disappointed by the result." At the opening of his first 
administration, when he might have justly dismissed William H. 
Seward from his cabinet because of an offensive note, he mag- 
nanimously chose to judge the man not by his mistakes, but by 
his merits — he rescued him from political suicide and gave him 
the opportunity to win, as he did, a first place among the great sec- 
retaries. When his irrevocable decision to accept Mr. Chase's 
resignation was announced, he said, "And yet there is not an- 
other man in the Union who would make as good a Chief Justice 
as Chase. And if I have the opportunity I will make him Chief 
Justice of the United States." He was as good as his word, the 
occasion came, he promptly honored it, and the man who had ap- 
parently sought to annoy the President and disturb the country 
at a critical moment, is by the grace of that same President sent 
down into history decorated with the ermine of the chief court 
of the world. Magnanimity could mount no higher, never had 
it worn a nobler crown! 

The patience of Mr. Lincoln was phenomenal. It was not the 
quiet of torpidity or indifference, but it was the masterful con- 
trol of powers throbbing with activity. He could command him- 
self. He could bide his time. He could and always did stop on 
the safe side of the premature. But when patience had fulfilled 



ADDRESS OF REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 65 

her mission, then restraint was changed to aggressive energy, and 
might became force. Thus it was he could wait without com- 
plaining while McClellan was delaying, but after that he could 
move like a thunderbolt when Grant was advancing. 

As we look back now to those years thickened over with clouds 
and shot with streaks of blood we say: What man of all the 
world could have guided so safely this nation? A man he was 
whose faith in eternal principles was unfailing. Listen, above 
the storm we hear his voice in these clarion v/ords — "Let us have 
faith that right makes right and in that faith let us to the end 
dare to do our duty as we understand it." When the night is 
blackest, we may harken at the door of his private thought and 
hear him say: 

"My soul be true ! 
Though on the shrine of truth the blaze 
Shed in the dark its dying rays. 
Keep though thy vigil, in such ways 
The Heavens smile on you." 

Thank God! his soul was true. He did keep his sleepless vigil. 
And therefore not only did the Heavens smile on him, but the 
clouds rolled back, the long night ended, and as on no other peo- 
ple the Heavens also smiled on us! 

This is the man to whom we are happy to-night to pay high 
honors, great in mind, great also in heart, an all-around great 
man. His character was not a bulge, it was a circle. His great- 
ness was not an eccentricity, it was a symmetry. Its lines were 
not an hyperbola chasing away from the center, but the sweep 
of a magnificent circumference around which the sturdy virtues 
march and within which the gentler graces sing! 



66 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

What he said and did was in keeping with what he was. Words 
falling from his letters, addresses, messages and proclamations will 
be texts for freedom and humanity in all languages down to the 
end of time. And a nation saved from ruin, man's capacity for 
self-government established beyond all debate, the rupture of the 
Union of these States forever distanced in the march of events, 
every star snatched out of the eclipse of secession and planted 
to shine again in the congenial blue of the flag, a race rescued 
from bondage, slavery eternally impossible on this continent — all 
these are accomplished facts, compacts made with all time, and 
each one signed by the name of Abraham Lincoln. 

Not only has his work been so done that it never can go back, 
but it must advance and has steadily gone forward. The pen that 
•wrote the Emancipation Proclamation was lifted and pointed like 
a prophet's staff to the Constitutional amendments that gave cit- 
izenship and franchise to the race but lately wearing chains, and 
it is still pointing to the yet unfinished legislation which will 
make the black man's suffrage secure against bribery, menace or 
fraud. Wonderful man that he was ! Out of the quiet of his Illi- 
nois home he stepped upon the pivotal point in this nation's his- 
tory, turned it into another course, and sent it bowling along the 
upward path of progress with such a momentum that the little 
men and diminished politicians who venture to stay its career will 
receive the simple consideration of being ground to dust and 
dashed aside. 

And in all this he was our own Lincoln ! In our deliverer we 
borrowed nothing from alien lands. The stream of his ancestry 
had parted with foreign shores so far back that it had shaken it- 
self entirely free from the sediment of monarchical ideas, and had 
mn itself pure in freedom's healthy soil. Slavery and disunion 



i 



ADDRESS OF REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 67 



were an American problem, and it was worked out to right results 
in the American way, and by the greatest American of them all. 

He, the most honored son of this century, has raised in this 
land the standard of manhood. Go stand in front of St. Gau- 
dens' matchless bronze, and you will think and rightly think 
that it ought to be more than ever mean and diiHcult and unman- 
ly in this country to be dishonest, because he was honest; cruel 
because he was tender; selfish because he was magnanimous; hasty 
because he was patient; despotic because he was just; despondent 
because his faith never failed. 

We may tarry to notice briefly one more lesson taught by 
this life and death, and that is. Sacrifice is ever the one price 
of liberty and progress. He who lives to-day may declare, 

"I am the owner of the sphere, 

Of the Seven Stars and the solar year. 

Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain. 

Of the Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 

But we are not to forget what it cost of struggle, agony, and 
death to secure ail these for us, John Erown said that he was 
worth more to hang than for anything else, and it is not aside 
from the truth to add that the rope with which he was strangled 
was needed to drag the car of our nation's progress out of the 
mire of conservatism and compromise, and whirl it along its pres- 
ent rapid and brilliant path. The world gets a new uplift when- 
ever some manly life is bit off by the feverish jaws of sacrifice. 
Over a soldier's grave on one of the Southern battlefields was 
found this inscription: 

"Whether on the tented field, 
Or in the battle's van. 
The fittest place for man to die 
Is where he dies for man." 



68 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

This is true and has always been true all the way from Her- 
mann, the German liberator in the first century, to Lincoln, the 
American liberator in the nineteenth century. He willingly lost 
his life for a great cause; he fell the last and sufficient offering 
into the gulf of civil war. The chasm closed. The war is over! 
There is no dispute now save the honorable strife between the 
ardent sons of the South and the stalwart sons of the North, as 
to which shall hasten first to the defense of the common flag. 

Abraham Lincoln's work is done; it is well done; it can never 
be undone. We say of him as Carlyle said in closing his essay 
on Goethe, "Vixit, vivit !" "He has lived, he still lives." 

From out the west, of broadening plain 
Where skies bend low o'er wavering grain 
Our Leader came, unmarred from nature's mould, 
In honor clear, in truth and conscience bold. 

A broken State he caught in giant hands, 
And bound it fast in blood-cemented bands. 
The Union's safe, forever safe! and more, 
This land is free from shore to shore! 

Each man's a man, no serfs or chattels here, 
Brows black as well as white God's image bear. 
No lash now falls when unpaid toilers lag, 
All stripes are laid alone upon our flag. 

It bears those gleaming lines of red, 
To show how heroes died in others' stead ; 
And Lincoln's blood flows there, the price 
Of freedom's costly sacrifice. 



THE SEVENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 
City of New York 

FEBRUARY ii, 1893 



Address of 
COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 



ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 

Colonel Ingersoll was born in Dresden, N. Y., 1833, but 
spent his boyhood in Wisconsin and Illinois. He prac- 
tised law in Illinois. In 1866 he was appointed Attor- 
ney-General of Illinois, and in 1876 won national fame 
as an orator in a speech in the Republican National Con- 
vention, nominating James G. Blaine. For many years 
he was noted as a cultured and powerful opponent of the 
Christian religion and most of his lectures and books 
had this origin. Among the latter were, "The Gods," 
"Some Mistakes of Moses," "Prose Poems," etc. 



ADDRESS OF 

COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Club: Abraham Lincoln, 
the genius of goodness, strange mingling of mirth and tears, of 
the tragic and grotesque, of cap and crown, of Socrates and De- 
mocritus, of ^sop and Marcus Aurelius, of all that is gentle, just, 
humorous and honest, merciful, wise, lovable and divine, and all 
consecrated to the use of man, while through all and over all were 
an overwhelming sense of obligation, of chivalric loyalty to truth, 
and upon all the shadow of the tragic end. 

Nearly all great historical characters are impossible monsters, 
distorted by flattery, or by calumny deformed. We know nothing 
of their peculiarities, or nothing but their peculiarities. To these 
great oaks there clings but little of the soil of humanity. Wash- 
ington is now only a steel engraving. About the real man who 
loved, and lived, and hated, and schemed, and fought, we know 
but little ; the glass through which we look at him is of such huge 
magnifying power that the features have grown exceedingly in- 
distinct. 

Hundreds of people are now engaged in smoothing out the lines 
in Lincoln's face — forcing all features to the common mould so 
that he may be known, not as he really was, but as they think he 
should have been. 

Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone. He had no ances- 
tors, he had no fellows, and he has no successors. 



72 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



How can we account for this great man? First of all, he had 
the advantage of living in a new country of social equality, of 
personal freedom, of seeing in the horizon of his future the per- 
petual star of hope. 

He preserved his individuality; his mental independence; his 
self-respect. 

He knew and mingled with men of every kind — and, after all, 
men are the best books — he became acquainted with the ambitions 
and hopes of the heart, the means used to accomplish ends, the 
springs of action and the seeds of thought. 

He was familiar with nature, with actual things, with com- 
mon every-day facts. He loved and appreciated nature, the poem 
of the year, the beautiful drama of the seasons. In a new coun- 
try a man must possess at least three virtues — at least three — 
honesty, courage and generosity. In cultivated society cultiva- 
tion is often more important than soil, and a well-executed coun- 
terfeit passes more readily than a blurred genuine. It is neces- 
sary only to observe the unwritten laws of society, to be honest 
enough to keep out of prison, and generous enough to subscribe 
in public where the subscription can be defended as an invest- 
ment. 

In a new country, character is essential ; in the old, reputation 
is often sufficient. In a new country they find out what a man 
really is ; in the old he is apt to pass for what he resembles. 

People only separated by distance are much nearer together than 
those divided by walls of caste. After all, it is of no advantage to 
live in a great city, where poverty degrades and where failure 
brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets, and 
the oaks and elms are more poetic than steeples and chains. In 
the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and the 
setting sun. You become acquainted with the stars and with the 



ADDRESS OF COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 73 

clouds. The constellations become your friends. You hear the 
rain on the roof, and you listen to the sigh of the wind. You are 
thrilled by that resurrection called Spring; you are touched and 
saddened by Autumn, the curse and poetry of death. Every field 
is a picture, a landscape, every landscape is a poem; every flower 
is a tender thought, and every forest is a fairy land. In the 
country you preserve your identity, your personality. There you 
are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom 
of an aggregation. In the country you keep your cheek close to 
the breast of nature. You are calmed and ennobled by the space, 
the amplitude and scope of earth and sky, and you are ennobled by 
the constancy of the stars. 

Lincoln never finished his education. He was a learner. To 
the night of his death, a pupil, an inquirer after knowledge. You 
have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called finish- 
ing their education. 

I have sometimes thought that many colleges were places where 
pebbles were polished and diamonds were dimmed, and I have 
often thought, with fear, suppose Shakespeare had graduated at 
Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney or a hypocritical 
parson. 

Lincoln was a perfectly natural man. He was also a great law- 
yer, and why? There is nothing shrewder in this world than 
intelligent honesty. Perfect candor is sword and shield. 

Lincoln understood the nature of man, and as a lawyer he al- 
ways endeavored to get at the truth, at the very heart of the case. 
He was not willing to deceive himself, no matter what his in- 
terests said, what his passion demanded. He was great enough 
to find the truth and strong enough to decide and pronounce 
judgment against his own desire. 

He was a many-sided man, acquainted with smiles and tears, 



74 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

complex in brain, single in heart, direct as liglit, and his words^ 
candid as the mirror, gave the perfect image of his thought. 

He was never afraid to ask, never too dignified to learn, never 
too dignified to admit that he did not know, and no man born be- 
neath our flag had keener wit or kinder humor. 

I have sometimes thought that humor is the pilot of reason. 

People without humor drift unconsciously into absurdity. Hu- 
mor sees the other side. Humor stands in the mind like a 
sceptre, a good-natured critic and gives its opinion before judg- 
ment is pronounced. Humor goes with good nature, and good 
nature is the climate of reason and of genius. In anger, reason 
abdicates and malice extinguishes the torch of the mind. Such 
was the humor of Lincoln that he could tell even unpleasant 
truths as charmingly as most men can tell what we wish to hear. 
He was not solemn. Solemnity is a mask worn by ignorance and 
hypocrisy. Solemnity is the preface, prologue and index to the 
cunning of a stupid. 

Lincoln was natural in his life and thought. He was the mas- 
ter of the story-teller's art; in illustrations apt; in applications 
perfect. Liberal in speech, shocking pharisees and prudes, using 
any word that wit could disinfect. 

He was a logician. His logic shed light. In its presence the 
obscure became luminous, and the most intricate political and 
metaphysical knots seemed to untie themselves. Logic is the 
necessary product of intelligence and sincerity. It cannot be 
learned. It cannot be taught. It is the child of a clear head 
and a good heart. 

Lincoln was candid, and that candor often deceived the de- 
ceitful. 

He had intellect without arrogance, genius without pride, and 
religion without cant, that is to say without bigotry and with- 



ADDRESS OF COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 75 

out deceit. He was an orator, clear, sincere, natural. He did 
not pretend. He did not say what he thought others thought, but 
what he thought, and if you wish to be sublime you must be natu- 
ral. You must keep close to the grass. You must sit by the fire- 
side of the heart. Above the clouds it is too cold. You must be 
simple in your speech, too much polish suggests insincerity. The 
great orator idolizes the real, transfigures the common, makes even 
the inanimate thrill and throb, fills the gallery of the imagina- 
tion with statues and pictures, perfect in form and color; brings 
to light the gold hoarded by memory, the miser shows the glitter- 
ing coin to the spendthrift. Hope enriches the brain, ennobles 
the heart, quickens the conscience, between his lips words bud 
and blossom. 

If you wish to know the difference between an orator and elocu- 
tionist, between what is felt and what is said, between what the 
heart and brain can do together, and what the brain can do alone, 
read Lincoln's wondrous speech at Gettysburg, and then the 
speech of Edward Everett. The oration of Lincoln will never be 
forgotten, it will live until languages are dead and lips are dust. 
The speech of Everett will never be read. 

The elocutionist believes in the virtues of voice, the sublimity 
of syntax; the majesty of long sentences and the genius of gesture. 

The orator loves the real, the simple, the natural, and he places 
thought and feeling above all. He knows that the greatest ideas 
should be expressed in the shortest words. He knows that a great 
idea is like a great statue, and he knows that the greater the 
statue the less drapery it needs. 

Let me read from this beautiful souvenir a few lines of what I 
call sculptured speech, and these words are as applicable to-day 
in many of the States of this Union as when they were first ut- 
tered. Let me read: 



76 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

"And when by all these means you have succeeded in human- 
izing the negTo, when you have put him down and made it im- 
possible for him to be but as the beast of the iield; v/hen you 
have extinguished his soul in this world, and placed him where 
the ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, 
are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn 
and rend you? What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty 
and independence? It is not our frowning battlement, our 
bristling seacoast, our army and our navy. 

"These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of these may 
be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle. 

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted 
in us. Our defence is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the 
heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. 

"Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism 
at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves within the bondage 
and you prepare your own limbs to wear them." 

lincoln was an immense personality. Firm, but not obstinate. 
Obstinacy is egotism; firmness, heroism. He influenced others 
without effort, unconsciously, and they submitted to him as men 
submit to nature, unconsciously. He was severe with himself 
and for that reason lenient with others. He did merciful things 
as stealthily as others committed crimes. Almost ashamed of 
tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with 
that charming confusion, that awkwardness, that is the perfect 
grace of modesty. 

As a nobleman, wishing to pay a small debt to a poor neigh- 
bor, reluctantly offers one hundred dollars and asks for change, 
fearing that he may be suspected of making a display of wealth, of 
a pretense of payment, so Lincoln hesitated to show his wealth 



ADDRESS OF COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 77 

of goodness even to the best he knew, a great man stooping, not 
wishing to make his fellows feel that they were small or mean. 
By his candor, by his perfect freedom from restraint, by saying 
what he thought and saying it absolutely in his own way, he made 
it not only possible but popular to be natural, to be true. 

He w^as the enemy of mock solemnity, of the stupidly respect- 
ful, of the cold and formal. He wore no official robes either on 
his body or his soul. He never pretended to be more or less, or 
other, or different from what he really was. He had the uncon- 
scious naturalness of nature's self. He built upon a rock. It did 
not satisfy him to have other people think he was right. He 
wanted to think that he was right. He built upon a rock, and 
the foundation was secure and broad. The structure was a pyra- 
mid, narrowing as it rose, and through days and nights of sor- 
row, through years of grief and pain, with unswerving purpose, 
with malice toward none, and with charity for all, with infinite 
patience, with unclouded vision, he hoped and toiled. There was 
no cloud in his brain. There was no hate in his heart. Stone 
after stone was made, until at last the proclamation found its 
place, and on that the goddess now stands. He knew others be- 
cause he was perfectly acquainted with himself. He cared nothing 
for place, everything for principle, and to the great man, place 
is only an opportunity for doing good. He cared nothing for 
money, but everything for independence. 

When no principle was involved, he was easily swayed, willing 
to go slowly if in the right direction. Sometimes willing to stop, 
but he wouldn't go back, and he wouldn't go wrong. 

He was willing to wait. He knew slavery had defenders, but 
no defense. He was neither tyrant nor slave. He neither knelt 
nor scorned. With him men were neither great, rich, nor poor, 
nor small. They were right or wrong. 



78 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

Through manners, clothes, titles, rags and race he saw the real, 
that which is beyond accident, policy, compromise and war, he 
saw the end. 

He was patient as destiny, whose undecipherable hieroglyphs 
were so deeply graven on his sad and tragic face. Nothing dis- 
closes real character like the use of power. It is very easy for 
the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity, but if you 
wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the 
supreme test. 

It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he 
never abused it except on the side of mercy. "Wealth could not 
purchase it, power could not awe this divine, this loving man. 

He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong. Hating 
slavery, pitying the master seeking to conquer, not persons, but 
prejudices, he was the embodiment of the self-denial, the courage, 
the hope and the nobility of a nation. He spoke not to inflame, 
not to upbraid, but to convince. He raised his hands, not to strike, 
but in benediction. 

He longed to pardon. He loved to see the pearls of joy on the 
cheeks of a wife whose husband he had rescued from the dead. 

Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He 
is the gentlest memory of our world. 



THE EIGHTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 
City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1894 



Address of 



BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 



JOHN PHILIP NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 

Dr. Newman was bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church from 1888 till his death. He was born in New 
York, 1826. He received his education at Cazenovia 
Seminary, studied theology and entered the Method- 
ist Episcopal ministry in 1849. The years 1850- 
1887 covered pastorates in Hamilton, N. Y.; Albany, 
N. Y.; New York City, and Washington, D. C; the 
foundation of schools, conferences and colleges; exten- 
sive travel (Palestine and Egypt, 1860-1); the chap- 
lainship of the Senate, 1869-74; ^^^ consular work, 
1874-6. He was noted as a pulpit orator and lecturer, 
and as the author of many books, among them "From 
Dan to Beersheba," "Christianity Triumphant," "Amer- 
ica for Americans," "The Supremacy of Law." 



ADDRESS OF 

BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of the 
City of New York: "On this memorable occasion let us call the roll 
of honor, recount the great benefactors who have blessed mankind, 
and call up the great statesmen of the past, and you will agree 
with me that there is one name that is worthy of immortal re- 
nown and deserving of imperishable fame, and that name is 
Abraham Lincoln. Human glory is sometimes as fickle as the 
winds, and as transient as a summer day, but some things are 
fixed beyond revocation. Lincoln's place in history is assured. 
Empires may rise and fall; republics may be born and die. Lib- 
erty may be a homeless wanderer among the tribes of men, but 
so long as men shall revere wisdom and admire patriotism and 
love liberty, so long will they recall his illustrious name with 
acclamations of gratitude and delight. 

He has all the symbols of the world's admiration, embalmed in 
song, recorded in history, eulogized in panegyric, cast in bronze, 
sculptured in marble, painted on the canvas, loved in the hearts 
of his countrymen, and alive in the memories of mankind, he is 
destined to live among the few mortals God has ordained into im- 
mortality thereunto. 

Some men are eminent while living, but their memory passes 
from the vision of the world because their words and deeds are 
of little worth to history, their fame is buried with them largely 



82 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

because their mission was limited and transient, because the 
world had taken possession of greater thoughts, because docu- 
ments have been discovered that revealed their selfishness. The 
sun of many a conspicuous man has gone down while yet it is day ; 
but Lincoln's fame can never suffer from either of these causes, 
for his life mission was this great country, and vast as humanity 
and enduring as time; and it is not possible, gentlemen, that any 
thought can occupy the mind of humanity greater than obedience 
to law in opposition to rebellion, or greater than freedom or lib- 
erty in opposition to slavery. 

Knowing him as we did in private ways and public walks, amid 
the sanctities of home and the duties of the presidential chair, 
in social correspondence and in public utterances, the grave does 
not contain aught against his fair fame as a man, a citizen or a 
president. Some men are not honored by their contemporaries, 
benefactors of mankind though they have been. They die neglect- 
ed, unsung and unmonumented, but future generations call their 
memories forth and embalm them in affection and gratitude. 
Lincoln had a three-fold greatness; great in life, great in death 
and great in the history of the world. 

And why was he great? "What had he accomplished to merit 
this renown ? Ask the old flag that floats over a unified republic ; 
ask this prosperous country of ours with its happy homes, its fertile 
fields, its metallic mines and mineral mountains, its splendid com- 
merce and its hitherto prosperous manufactories. Ask the Grand 
Army of the Eepublic. Ask millions of freed men advancing to 
a better civilization; ask the nations of the Old World who now 
have a profound respect for this proud and glorious country of 
ours. 

Great men appear in groups, and in groups they disappear from 
the vision of the world. Isolated greatness is a stranger to our 



ADDRESS OF BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 83 

race. Solidarity is the law of national progress. Wherever there 
is one who is eminently great, around him are coadjutors. Take 
for instance that magnificent group of historic characters in the 
sixteenth century — Maximilian I. and Charles V.; Francis I. and 
Henry VIII.; Isabella and Ferdinand; Columbus and Luther; and 
then as contemporaries, Napoleon in France, Wellington in Eng- 
land and Washington in America, and all the galaxies of glory 
that have been resplendent in any country. Remember that his- 
toric group of our own country, Lincoln and Grant; Seward and 
Chase; Stanton and Sumner; Morton and Conkling; Sherman and 
Sheridan ; Porter and Farragut. Beat that if you can. 

We are to measure Lincoln by the greatness of his associateSc 
Some men are great because of the littleness of their surround- 
ings. He only is great, Mr. President, who is great amid greatness, 
and this law of historic groupings is true of our day in piping times 
of peace. Genius is not aflame and greatness is not apparent ; but 
when the crisis comes God lifts the curtain from obscurity and 
the man of the hour comes forth. The crisis is upon us. It re- 
minds us of the darker days of 1860, but on the throne of the 
universe is the God of our fathers, and we have nothing to fear, 
with a Sherman in the Senate, and Reed in the House, and Mc- 
Kinley in Ohio, and God over all. 

Our English cousins remind us of the lowliness of the birth 
of Mr. Lincoln, of his neglected childhood, of his terrible strug- 
gles against poverty, but we are not ashamed of the lowliness of 
his birth; we are proud of his greatness as illustrative in him of 
the possibilities of the American citizen. We never placed a pre- 
mium upon neglected childhood. Of the nineteen presidents of 
this republic, fourteen were university men, having graduated 
with the highest honors, and, with two or three exceptions, all 
occupied a high social position from the cradle to the grave. But 



84 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

I confess to you, my honored friends, that I would rather be the 
rail-splitter of Illinois, or the canal-boat driver of Ohio, or the 
tanner of Galena, and die the honored President of the United 
States, than to be born a royal prince and die a royal scoundrel. 

Lincoln was a providential man, but he had so much humility 
that while he believed that God had raised him up to save a great 
nation and to advance the great interests of humanity, he never 
had pride enough to suppose that he was greater than Congress 
or greater than the American people. His character was strange- 
ly symmetrical; temperate but not austere; brave but not rash; 
constant but not stubborn; he laid caution over against hope, 
lest hope should be premature, and hope over against caution, lest 
caution should fail in the hour of dread and danger. His love 
of justice equaled his love of compassion; his self-abnegation 
found its highest expression in the welfare of the people, and his 
honesty was never suspected; his integrity was never questioned. 
The beauty of his moral character has thrown into the shade the 
splendor of his intellect. The time will come when the severest 
critic of mental philosophy and mental development will sit in 
judgment of admiration upon the splendid furniture of that great 
mind. He was a logician by nature. His terse and beautiful 
rhetoric rivals the utterances of the greatest orators of the past 
and present; and when the orations of the Roman Forum, and the 
Greek Bema, and the British Parliament have ceased to inspire 
the admiration of the scholar, Lincoln's inaugurals and his Gettys- 
burg panegyric will excite the admiration of the critic and the 
scholar in all lands and under all circumstances. 

We are to measure him by the obstacles he surmounted; by the 
results that he achieved. It is not philosophy, gentlemen, for us 
to judge of a man aside from his surroundings. Every age has 
its heroes, every crisis has its master. Every man must stand on 



ADDRESS OF BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 85 

his own pedestal of renown. It will not do to say that Talleyrand 
was greater than Lincoln, or Pitt was greater. We do not know 
what Talleyrand would have done if he had been in Lincoln's 
place, or what Pitt would have done, nor do we know what Lin- 
coln would have done had he been in the position of either. We 
must, therefore, judge of the man's greatness by his own sur- 
roundings, by his own age. 

He entered political life amid the most virulent convulsions in 
the annals of time. He was in a death grapple with a people that 
we had as companions of a hundred years; a proud, chivalrous 
people with an army of the bravest soldiers, commanded by gen- 
erals that were equal to the marshals of France, backed by a 
people that had been educated in treason and by a womanhood 
schooled in rebellion. Nay, more than this, in all these terrible 
purgatorial years through which the nation passed, his hope- 
fulness inspired the despondency of the North when our armies 
were defeated in the South, He arose in supernal majesty against 
foes abroad and copper-head Democrats at home. You are 
therefore, to judge of him by these great achievements. Nay, 
more than this, if there is anything that places him highest in 
our estimation it is the singleness of his purpose as the President 
cf the United States. He knew the philosophy, Mr. President, of 
a supreme thought, and that supreme thought was to maintain 
the Union of the United States. His guide was the Constitution. 
He would consent to no compromise. He would not abate one jot 
or tittle. He would have the Union or nothing. He would have 
the Union with slavery or without slavery. As a great constitu- 
tional lawyer he grasped this fundamental fact : he said the slave 
would be better off in the Union of the United States than in a 
Confederacy with a live slave for its chief corner-stone. The 
emancipation of slavery was a subordinate consideration with 



86 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

him, and all other cognate thoughts were subordinate. But like 
a magnificent vision, the perpetuity of the nation arose before 
him and he bent all his energies for that preservation. 

Would you ask for a higher or nobler standard ? Remember his 
rare discrimination, his sagacity in selecting men to maintain 
that Union, to perpetuate it, which, I trust, will be perpetuated 
until the last syllable of recorded time. And in nothing more is 
the greatness of his mind displayed than in his persistent and 
enthusiastic support of General Grant to crush the rebellion. Jeal- 
ousy and ambition were rife. Wild passions of war had given 
birth to a pandemonium of defamation. Grant was opposed at 
every upward step. He was neglected or left without command; 
he was maligned, and in every possible way obstacles were thrown 
in his path. But Lincoln stood firm by him, and these two men 
go down hand in hand into history amid the benedictions of a 
grateful people. 

It is well, therefore. Republicans, that you gather here once a 
year around this festive board to commemorate the character of 
this illustrious man. Gather here to rekindle the fires of patriot- 
ism ; gather here to protect the purity and the freedom of the bal- 
lot in the North and in the South. Gather here to swear by the 
better angels of your nature, that the Republican party shall have 
a new baptism of patriotism, and once more control the interests 
and destinies of this country. That by your voice and your ener- 
gies and your patriotism you shall see to it that those great prin- 
ciples advocated by Mr. Lincoln shall never be neglected, and 
above all, that the free trade of the South shall not destroy the 
protected industries of the North. 



THE NINTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 
City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1895 



Address of 



HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 



JOHN MELLEN THURSTON 

Ex- Senator Thurston was bom in Montpelier, Vt., in 
1847, t'Ut moved to Wisconsin in early boyhood. His 
youth was one of rugged struggle against adverse con- 
ditions in the effort to secure an education; during his 
college course at Wayland University, Wisconsin, he 
supported himself by farm work and the roughest man- 
ual labor. He was admitted to the Bar in 1869, and 
started practice in Omaha. He soon won prominence in 
local municipal affairs; became a member of the Legis- 
lature of the State of Nebraska in 1875, and U. S. 
Senator for Nebraska in 1895. He was Chairman of the 
Republican National Conventions of 1888 and 1896, and 
U. S. Commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition in 1901. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 



Mr. Toastmaster and Gentlemen of the Republican Club : In the 
days of Abraham Lincoln, a deserter or a conscript was not re- 
ceived with favor. I am both. I enlisted for a Michigan banquet, 
and I find myself drafted in New York. To the charge of deser- 
tion I plead detention by imperative professional duty. As a 
drafted man I throw myself upon the mercy of the court. I 
have already disappointed one magnificent audience, and am 
about to disappoint another. I say it, advisedly, for you coming 
here to sit at the feet of a master, find only a humble disciple of 
that great lawyer, orator and logician, whose place upon your 
program no living man can adequately fill. I am from the re- 
generated West, where the bison and the Populist no longer 
bellow and cavort, where fusion is confused, and where the polit- 
ical ragtag and bobtail have taken to the woods. The West 
is once more Republican and American. Strong in the knowledge 
of her growing power, her coming empire, she leaves sectionalism 
and provincialism for those who educate their children, spend 
their vacations and receive their political ideas abroad. This 
mighty West has furnished all the Republican presidents and 
some of the statesmen of the country, and I assure you that the 
supply of raw material is not exhausted yet. We shall offer you 
the best we have in 1896. But the people of the West are not 
patriots for office. Their Republicanism does not depend upon 



go THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

the location of candidates, and the nominee of the next national 
convention will receive the vote of every Western state in this 
country. We will stand by our farms and our mines, but not to 
the injury of the commerce or the capital of the East. 

I love my State, her sturdy people, her matchless progress, her 
growing industries, her thriving cities, her mellow sunshine, yea, 
her mighty storms, but I love my country first. Nebraska put one 
star in the azure of the flag and New York put another, but when 
they took their places in that flag, they were no longer the stars 
of New York and Nebraska, but stars of the mightiest nation of 
the earth, shining for the protection and prosperity of every 
American citizen. 

I am commissioned to-night to speak of Abraham Lincoln, the 
simplest, sweetest, saintliest, sublimest character of the age. 
Sixty million free people join with us in commemoration of his 
birth, yet he wielded no sceptre and wore no crown; but in his 
life he exercised greater powers, called into existence grander 
armies, and won for his country and humanity grander victories 
than any who preceded him upon the earth, and in his death he 
reached to the full stature of immortal fame. 

It is not my purpose to-night to review the life of Abraham 
Lincoln, for that is a part of the history of our country. That 
history remains with all loyal men, it is emblazoned upon the 
nation's battle-flags; it speaks from silent lips; it lingers in the 
shadow of desolate lives; yea, and it blooms in beauty above the 
sacred dust of those who fell by river and by sea. Vtt should be 
cherished in every public school ; it should be preached from every 
Christian pulpit; it should be honored, venerated, loved, wherever 
liberty is dear to man. 

I shall refer to-night to only one event in the public career of 
Abraham Lincoln, but the happening of that event was the har- 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 91 

binger of a new civilization, the dawn of a new epoch in human 
affairs. Not long since, as I sat in a crowded court room, engaged 
in the trial of a case involving the title to a valuable tract of 
real estate, there came to the witness stand a venerable 
white-haired negro. Written all over his old, black face was the 
history of three-quarters of a century of such an existence as few 
persons have ever known. Born a slave, he had stood upon the 
auction block and been sold to the highest bidder; he had seen 
his wife and children dragged from his side by those who mocked 
his breaking heart; he bore upon his back the scars and ridges 
of a master's lash. When asked his age he drew himself proudly 
up and said: "For fifty years I was a chattel; on the first day of 
January, 1863, Old Uncle Abe made me a man." 

The act which set that old man free was the crowning glory 
of Lincoln's life, for by it he not only saved a nation, but eman- 
cipated a race. 

We of the Anglo-Saxon tongue are justly proud of Magna 
Charta, that great constitutional enactment, set up by the Barons 
of Runnymede against the unlimited exercise of kingly power. 
We are justly proud of the Declaration of Independence, that first 
complete written assertion of the equality of men, and the right 
of government by the people. The genesis of American liberty 
was in the Declaration of Independence, but the gospel of its new 
testament was vmtten by Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation 
Proclamation. And the Magna Charta of man's real freedom and 
equality is the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the 
United States. 

I am a believer in the overruling providence of Almighty God. 
I cannot so far belittle the miracle of my own existence and the 
incomprehensible splendors of the universe as for a moment to be- 
lieve that they came of chance. What thoughtful student of his- 



92 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



tory can deny that this continent of ours has been under the guid- 
ance of an especial Providence, which kept it through all ages of 
early man until the civilization of the Old World had grown and 
expanded and was ready for transposition to the New; which put 
the preposterous idea of a round world into the quickened brain 
of the Genoese sailor; gave him courage to go from court to 
court until his prayer was answered by the sympathetic queen ? It 
filled his sail with favoring breezes, stood at the helm and guided 
his ship aright; when he landed on the unknown strand, he had 
raised above him the great vdiite cross of a Savior's love, the em- 
blem of immortal hope. 

Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, Grant; discoverer, father, pre- 
server, hero. Did chance select them each for his glorious work 
so gloriously performed ? Let the fool answer hov/ he will, I pre- 
fer to see the finger of Divine design. The rail-splitter of Illi- 
nois became the President of the Republic in the darkest hour of 
our history. Inexperienced and untried in public affairs, he orig- 
inated national policies, overruled statesmen, directed armies, re- 
moved generals, and when it became necessary to save the na- 
tion, gave a new interpretation to the Constitution of the United 
States. He amazed politicians and offended the leaders of his 
own party, but the people from whom he sprang trusted him 
blindly, and followed him by instinct. The child leads the blind, 
not by greater strength or intelligence, but by certainty of vision. 
Abraham Lincoln was above the clouds and stood in the clear 
sunshine of Heaven's indicated will. 

So stands the mountain, 
While the murky shadows thicken at its base; 
Beset by the tempest, lashed by the storm, 
Darkness and desolation on every side; 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 93 

No ray of hope in the lightning's lurid lances, 

No voice of safety in the crashing thunderbolt ; 

But high above the topmost mist, 

Vexed by no wave of angry sound, 

Kissed by the sun of day, wooed by the stars of night, 

The eternal summit lifts its sunny crest, 

Crowned with the infinite serenity of peace. 

God said let there be light, and there was light: light on the 
ocean, light on the land. God said let there be light: light on 
Calvary, light for the souls of men. God said let there be light, 
and there was light : light on the Emancipation Proclamation, light 
on the honor of the nation, light on the Constitution of the 
United States, light on the black faces of patient bondsmen, light 
on every standard of liberty throughout the world. 

Divine justice would not permit that the nation should be pre- 
served under a Constitution which meant the perpetuation of hu- 
man slavery. The careful student of that great conflict readily 
discovers that up to the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, 
the doubtful tide of battle set most strongly against the Union 
shore, reverse followed reverse until the boasting host of the Con- 
federacy seemed apt to make their declaration good that they 
would proclaim the Confederate government from the steps of the 
National Capitol. But from the hour when the cause of the Union 
became the cause of humanity; from the hour when the flag of 
the republic became the flag of liberty; from the hour when its 
stars and stripes no longer floated above a slave; yea, from the 
sacred hour of the nation's new birth, that dear banner never 
faded from the sky, and the brave boys who bore it never wavered 
in their onward march to victory. 

With the single exception of Chancellorsville, and that stub- 



94 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

born, doubtful day at Chickamauga, no decisive field of battle was 
ever lost by the men who sang with double enthusiasm: 

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on." 

From the Potomac to the Shenandoah, from Chattanooga to the 
sea, the war-worn, battle-scarred veterans took new hope, touched 
elbows with new courage, saw in each other's eyes a new fire. 
Sang with a new inspiration that glorious anthem : 

**In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea, 
With the glory in His bosom, that transfigures you and me. 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. 
For God is marching on." 

The blue and the gray lie in eternal slumber side by side, heroes 
all; they fell face to face, brother against brother, to expiate a 
nation's sin. The lonely fireside, the unknown graves, the memory 
of the loved, the yearning for the lost, desolated altars and the 
broken hopes are above recall. The wings of our weak prejudices 
beat in vain against the iron doors of fate, and through the min- 
gled tears, that fall alike upon the honored dead of both North 
and South, turn hopeful eyes to that new future of prosperity and 
power, only possible under the shelter of the dear old flag. To 
the North and South; the master and the slave; the white man 
and the black, Abraham Lincoln was God's providence. 

What is the heritage to us? Lincoln on the immortal field of 
Gettysburg said, "A government of the people, by the people, for 
the people." A government of the people so broad that it covers 
land, home and liberty to the down-trodden and oppressed of all 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 95 

the earth, so strong that the sheathed swords of its citizen soldiery 
need never again be drawn to protect it from foes without or dis- 
sensions within; so liberal that in its sky the star of every faith 
may find a place and by its altars individual conscience fears 
neither Church nor State; so well beloved that the bright bayonet 
does honor in every American hand, and the certain bulwark of its 
liberty in every American heart. 

A government by the people in which the unit of political 
power is individual citizenship. Government of the people is or- 
ganized to protect the weak against oppression by the strong, 
to protect the poor against unjust exaction by the rich, to protect 
the ignorant from the subtleties of the learned. The ballot-box is 
the safety of a people's government and of the United States of 
America. That government that will not protect its citizens in 
the exercise of their highest privilege of citizenship should not 
be permitted to cumber the earth. God's justice will mark it for 
destruction as it has marked other nations for lesser crimes. 

What we need in this country is the Emancipation Proclamation 
and the stars and stripes at every polling place. We need a re- 
vival of the American flag. Let it float over every American 
school-house; let the true story of every American battlefield be 
taught in every public school. Set the stars of the Union in the 
hearts of our children, and the glory of the republic will remain 
forever. It does not matter whether the American cradle is 
rocked to the music of "Yankee Doodle" or the lullaby of "Dixie," 
if the flag of the nation is displayed above it, and the American 
baby can be safely trusted to pull about the floor the rusty scab- 
bard and the battered canteen, whether the inheritance be from 
blue or gray, if from the breast of a true mother and the lips 
of a brave father its little soul is fllled with the glory of the 
American constellation. 



96 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

A government for the people, for the American people; not for 
those alone of native birth, but for the men who will loyally and 
in good faith subscribe to the Constitution of the United States 
and obey the laws of the land. Every man who loved our coun- 
try well enough to fight for it, if need be to die for it; every 
man who loved it well enough to bid good-bye to his native land, 
look for the last time on the graves of the loved ones, and chance 
himself to the ocean and the unknown shore beyond in the hope of 
securing to himself and children liberty and opportunity, is worthy 
of American citizenship and to participate in the best govern- 
ment on the earth. 

Open the gates of Castle Garden wide to every God-fearing, lib- 
erty-loving, law-abiding, labor-seeking, decent man. But close 
them at once and forever upon all whose birth, whose policy, 
whose teachings, whose practices would endanger the safety of 
American labor. 

It is related that in Pittsburgh, on the night of the last elec- 
tion, after the returns had made it certain that the country had 
gone Republican, two hard-handed workingmen, clothed in 
their working blouses, climbed to the top of a smokeless chimney 
and there, in the glare of the city's electric light, nailed to it an 
American flag, and when the morning sunshine blessed the earth 
it kindled the waves of that dear old flag with glory. That flag 
on that dismantled chimney meant that prosperity would come 
back to the United States with the triumph of the Republican 
party. It meant that whatever labor is to be done for the people 
of the United States shall be done by the people of the United 
States under the stars and stripes. It meant that the hope of the 
common people, the salvation of American labor, the permanency 
of American institutions, is only safe with the party of Abraham 
Lincoln. And this government of the people shall not perish from 



I 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 97 

the earth. Our nation has stood for twelve decades, a menace 
to oppression and hope for the oppressed. Mother of republics — 
her lullaby is sung over every cradle of liberty throughout the 
world. The last throne has disappeared from the western con- 
tinent, and the conscience of the twentieth century will not tol- 
erate a crown. 

On Freedom's scroll of honor the name of Abraham Lincoln is 
written first. The colossal statue of his fame stands forever on 
the pedestal of a people's love. About it are the upturned, glori- 
fied faces of an emancipated race; in its protecting shadow, liberty, 
equal rights and justice is the heritage of every American citizen. 
The sunshine of approving Heaven rests upon it like an infinite 
benediction, and over it calmly floats the unconquered flag of the 
greatest nation of the earth. 



THE TENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNEE 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1896 



Address of 
HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 



CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW, LL.D. 

Senator Depew was born in Peekskill, N. Y., 1834. 
He graduated from Yale in 1856 and was admitted to 
the Bar in 1858. In 1861-2 he was a member of the 
Assembly of the State of New York and in 1872 declined 
the appointment of U. S. Minister to Japan. He has 
been since i856 closely associated in the management of 
the New York Central & Hudson River R. R., its prede- 
cessors and allied lines; from 1885-98 he was president 
of the N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R. and afterwards chairman 
of the boards of directors of the various railroads com- 
prising the N. Y. C. Lines. Since 1899 he has been 
United States Senator from the State of New York. He 
is a director of numerous railroads and banking corpor- 
ations and is distinguished as an orator and after-dinner 
speaker. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: Celebrations of the anniversaries 
of heroes and statesmen, of battlefields and significant events, have, 
as a rule, only an historical interest. They lack the freshness 
and passion of touch and attachment. It has always been the 
habit of peoples to deify their heroes. After a few generations 
they are stripped of every semblance to humanity. We can reach 
no plane where, after the lapse of 100 years, we can view George 
Washington as one of ourselves. He comes to us so perfect, full- 
rounded, and complete that he is devoid of the defects which make 
it possible for us to love greatness. The same is largely true of 
all the Eevolutionary worthies, except that the Colonial Dames 
have raised — or lowered — Benjamin Franklin to the level of our 
vision by deciding that lie was so human that his descendant in 
the fourth generation is unworthy of their membership. Thank 
Heaven, we can still count as one of ourselves, with his humor, and 
his sadness, with his greatness and his every-day homeliness, with 
his wit and his logic, with his gentle chivalry that made him 
equal to the best born knight, and his awkward and ungainly ways 
that made him one of the plain people, our martyred President, our 
leader of the people, Abraham Lincoln. 

The Revolutionary War taught liberty from the top down; the 
Civil War taught liberty from the people up to the colleges and 
pulpits. The Revolutionary struggle was the revolt of property 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



against unjust taxation until it evoluted into independence. It 
was the protest of the leaders in commercial, industrial, and agri- 
cultural pursuits against present and prospective burdens. Sublime 
as were its results, and beneficial as was the heritage which it left 
behind, there was a strong element of materialism in its genesis 
and motive. The Civil War threw to the winds every material 
consideration in the magnificent uprising of a great and pros- 
perous people moved to make every sacrifice for patriotism, for 
country and for the enfranchisement of the bondsmen. The 
leaders of the Revolutionary struggle represented Colonial suc- 
cess. Washington was the richest man in the United States. 
Jefferson and Hamilton, Jay and the Adamses v/ere the best 
products cf the culture of American colleges and of opportunity. 
In the second period, when the contest was for the supremacy 
of the principle of the preservation of the Union against the 
destructive tendencies of the State rights, Daniel Webster and 
Henry Clay represented the American farmers' sons who had also 
received the benefits of liberal education. In the third period the 
protest against the extension of slavery, the war for the Union — 
with the contributions which came to our statesmanship from the 
newly settled territories, we had the heroes born in the log cabins. 
Their surroundings and deprivations were not those of poverty, 
but of struggle. The great leader was born in the log cabin. 
A little clearing in the wilds of Kentucky, a shiftless wandering 
to Indiana, and a repetition of the experience, another shiftless 
movement to Illinois, with no better results, a neighborhood of 
rough, ignorant, drinking and quarreling young men, and with 
no advantages of books, of household teachings, of church in- 
fluences, of gentle companionship — these were the environments 
from which there came, without stain, the purest character, the 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 103 

noblest, the most self-sacrificing and the loftiest statesman of our 
country or of any country. 

The age of miracles has passed, and yet, unless he can be ac- 
counted for upon well-defined principles, Lincoln was a miracle. 
At twenty years of age, dressed in skins, never having known a 
civilized garment, he was the story-teller of the neighborhood 
the good-natured giant who, against rough and cruel companions 
used his great strength to defend the weak and protect the op 
pressed. He thirsted for knowledge, and he exhausted the libra 
ries for miles around, whose resources were limited to five vol 
umes, "Pilgrim's Progress/' "Robinson Crusoe," "Weems' Wasb 
ington," a short history of the United States and the Bible. As a 
laborer upon the farm he was not a success, because he diverted 
his fellow-laborers from their work with his marvelous gift of 
anecdote and his habit of mounting a stump and eloquently dis- 
cussing the questions of the day. As a flat-boatman upon the 
Mississippi, he was not a success, because, while he was among 
the class which delighted to call itself half-horse and half-alliga- 
tor in the mad debauches on the route and in New Orleans, he 
was not of them. As a keeper of a country store he was not a 
success, because his generous nature could not refuse credit to 
the poor, who could never pay. As a surveyor he was a failure, 
because his mind was upon other and larger questions than the 
running of a boundary line. As a lawyer he was successful only 
after many years of practice, because unless he was enlisted for 
right and justice, he could not give to the case either his elo- 
quence or his judgment. As a member of the Legislature of Illi- 
nois he made little mark, for the questions were not such as stirred 
his mighty nature. As a member of Congress he came to the 
front only once, and then on the unpopular side. The country 
was wild for war, for the acquisition of territory by conquest, 



104 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

and for an invasion of the neighboring republic of Mexico. When 
to resist the madness of the hour meant the present, and perhaps 
permanent, annihilation of political prospects, among the few 
who dared to rise and protest against war, and especially an 
unjust one, was Abraham Lincoln. 

The orators of all times have had previous orators for their 
models ; but Lincoln formed his style by writing compositions with 
a piece of charcoal upon shingles or upon the smooth side of a 
wooden shovel, and copying them afterward upon paper. In this 
school, poverty of resources taught Lincoln condensation and 
clearness, and he learned the secret of success in appealing to the 
people — that is directness and lucidity. Caesar had it when he 
cried: **Veni, vidi, vici!" Luther had it when he cried: "Here 
I stand; I can do no other; God help me. Amen." Cromwell 
had it when he cried to his soldiers: "Put your trust in God and 
keep your powder dry." Napoleon had it when, before the battle 
of the Pyramids, he called upon his soldiers to remember that 
forty centuries looked down upon them. Patrick Henry had it 
when he uttered those few sentences which have been the in- 
spiration of the school books since the Colonial days. Webster 
had it when he said, "Union and liberty, one and inseparable, now 
and forever." Grant had it when he said, "I will fight it out on 
this line if it takes all summer." And Lincoln had it when he 
drew to him his people and the men and women of his country by 
the tender pleadings of his first inaugural, by the pathetic, almost 
despairing appeal of his second inaugural, and by that speech at 
Gettysburg which made every hero, who had died a soldier, again 
in the person of a new hero created to take his place by that 
marvelous invocation. He expressed in a single sentence the 
principle and policy of the purchase of Louisiana, and the su- 
premacy of the United States upon the North American continent 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 105 

when lie said, **The Mississippi shall go unvexed to the sea." He 
added to the list of immortal utterances which go down the ages 
to lead each new generation to higher planes of duty and patriot- 
ism, "With malice toward none; with charity for all." 

The reception held by the President day by day was a series 
of amusing or affecting scenes. He at once satisfied and recon- 
ciled an importunate but life-long friend, who wanted a mission 
to a distant but unhealthy country, by saying, when all argu- 
ments failed, "Strangers die there soon, and I have already given 
the position to a gentleman whom I can better spare than you." 
But when a little woman, whose scant raiment and pinched features 
indicated the struggle of respectability with poverty, secured, after 
days of effort, an entrance to his presence, he said, "Well, my 
good woman, what can I do for you?" She replied, "My son, my 
only child, is a soldier. His regiment was near enough our house 
for him to take a day and run over and see his mother. He was 
arrested as a deserter when he re-entered the lines and condemned 
to be shot, and he is to be executed to-morrow." Hastily arising 
from his chair, the President left behind Senators and Congressmen 
and generals, and seizing this little woman by the hand he dragged 
her on a run as with great strides he marched with her to the 
office of the Secretary of War. She could not tell where the regi- 
ment then was, or at what place, or in what division the execution 
was to take place, and Stanton, who had become wearied with 
the President's clemency, which, he said, destroyed discipline, 
begged the President to drop the matter; but Mr. Lincoln rising, 
said with vehemence, "I will not be balked in this. Send this 
message to every headquarters, every fort and every camp in the 
United States, 'let no military execution take place until further 
orders from me. A. Lincoln.' " 

He called the cabinet to meet, and as they entered they found 



io6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

Mm reading Artemus Ward. He said : "Gentlemen, I have found 
here a most amusing and interesting book which has entertained 
and relieved me. Let me read from a new writer, Artemus Ward." 
Chase, who never understood him, in his impatient dignity, said, 
"Mr. President, we are here upon business." The President laid 
down the book, opened a drawer of his desk, took out a paper, 
and said, "Gentlemen, I wish to read you this paper, not to ask 
your opinion as to what I shall do, for I am determined to issue 
it, but to ask your criticism as to any change of form of phrase- 
ology," and the paper which he read v/as the immortal Proclama- 
tion of Emancipation, which struck the shackles from the limbs of 
4,000,000 of slaves. And when the cabinet, oppressed and over- 
whelmed by the magnitude of this deed about to be done, went 
solemnly out of the room, as the last of them looked back he 
saw this strangest, saddest, wisest, most extraordinary of rulers 
reading Artemus Ward. 

To-day for the first time since Lincoln's death, the twelfth of 
February is a legal holiday in our State of New York. And it 
is proper that the people should, without regard to their party 
afiiliations, celebrate in a becoming manner the birth and the story 
and the achievements of this savior of the republic. But it 
is equally meet and proper for us who are gathered here as Re- 
publicans to celebrate, also, the deeds and the achievements and 
the character of the greatest Republican who ever lived. This 
party to which we belong, this great organization of which we 
are proud, this mighty engine in the hands of Providence for the 
accomplishment of more for the land in which it has worked than 
any party in any representative government ever accomplished be- 
fore, has its teachings and inspirations more largely from the 
statesmanship and utterances of Abraham Lincoln than from any 
other man. The first speech he ever made was a speech for that 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 107 

policy which was the first policy of George Washington, the first 
policy of the greatest creative brain of the Revolutionary pe- 
riod, Alexander Hamilton, the principle of the protection of Amer- 
ican industries. With the keen and intuitive grasp of public 
necessity and of the future growth of the republic, which always 
characterized Lincoln, he saw in early life that this country, 
Tinder a proper system of protection, could become self-supporting; 
he saw that a land of raw materials was necessarily a land of 
poverty, while a land of diversified industries, each of them self- 
sustaining and prosperous, was a land of colleges and schools, a 
land of science and literature, a land of religion and law, a land 
of prosperity, happiness and peace. 

Abraham Lincoln would draw the last dollar the country pos- 
sessed and draft the last man capable of bearing arms to save the 
republic. He would use any currency by which the army could 
be kept in the field and the navy upon the seas. When the peril 
was so great that our promise to pay only yielded thirty cents on 
the dollar, he prevented the collapse of our credit and the ruin 
of our cause by pledging the national faith to the payment of our 
debts and the redemption of our notes and bills at par in money 
recognized in the commerce of the world. The Republican party 
stands for a policy which will furnish abundant revenue for 
every requirement of the government, and which will maintain the 
credit of the United States at home and abroad up to the standard 
which is justified by its unequaled wealth and power. 

All hail the spirit, all hail the principles, all hail the example, 
the inspiring example of that man of the people, that wisest of 
rulers, that most glorious of Republicans, Abraham Lincoln! 



THE ELEVENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, i8gg 



Address of 
REV, MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 



MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 

Dr. Stryker was born in Vernon, N. Y., in 1851, 
Graduated from Hamilton College, 1872, and from the 
Auburn Theological Seminary in 1876. From 1876-92 he 
filled pastorates at Auburn, N. Y.; Ithaca, N. Y.; Holy- 
oke, Mass., and Chicago; since 1892 he has been presi- 
dent of Hamilton College. He is an authority on 
hymnology and has published several volumes of 
hymns and poems and one of sermons. 



ADDRESS OF 

MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 



Mr. President and all fellow Republicans, without distinction as 
to present condition of servitude: Though it is somewhat out of 
my line, you will permit me to remark that clubs are trumps ; and 
I suppose I should add of them all this club is the ace. Certainly 
in the last twelvemonth a remarkable hand has been played for all 
it is worth. And the superiority of the American lead to "bumble 
puppy" has been demonstrated, and the absurd finesse from the 
two-spot to a jack — from the platform to the candidate — having 
failed the best hand has won by tremendous odds, with what 
Charles Lamb delighted in — "A clean hearth, a good fire and the 
rigors of the game." Of a v/ise and timely administration the 
best pledge so far is afforded in the appointment of that old Oneida 
County boy, Lyman J. Gage, to be Secretary of the Treasury. His 
clear head is mounted upon a first-class backbone. He will do. I, 
for one, am thankful that Mr. Speaker Eeed is still at the old 
stand, where he can be gotten at in 1900. Brighter days are at 
the door, empiricism is passing. A trusty leader, with his party 
about him, shall carry us over the glad threshold of the new 
century. 

But to my errand — the holiday and the man. Thanks, under 
God, to him whose singular greatness is the token of all these 
your greetings, we have a republic undivided and indivisible. 
Your name and history is national ; so be your sympathies and your 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



endeavors. Ke whom we are met to celebrate was a Republican, 
and was not ashamed to say so. Confusion is revealed in the 
sterility of the hybrid. Be it ours to wear the name of Repub- 
lican as he defined and ennobled it, who held party as an instru- 
ment, politics as his opportunity, patriotism his motive, and the 
people's ultimate truth his goal. 

Upon this radiant and solemn anniversary you are assembled to 
relight the torch of the wide-awake and the flambeau of mourn- 
ing, gazing through all upon yonder untorn emblem, the guerdon 
of our awful travail when freedom was reborn and the guidon 
of our forward marching. Beautiful flag ! He loved it and main- 
tained it. Dearer for his true sake! In the crises and exactions 
of the unrevealed years may the great price of which he was part 
never be forgotten; may its folds never be dimmed by dishonor nor 
its glory abated by the recreancy of those nursed under its shelter ! 
Having beamed over broken manacles, may it never blush over 
broken promises! From fort and fleet, from school and capitol and 
home, let it float unsullied — the morning bloom of freedom and 
equal justice to all who hope because they remember. And if by 
foes without, or dire foes within, its^ true meaning shall ever be 
menaced, may it be protected and lifted higher yet by hands that 
shall take heart of grace in recalling that knight of the axe and 
master of the pen who made ours, whatever else it shall be, Lin- 
coln's land. 

Eighty and eight years ago his birthday. Long ere this, even 
with no foreclosure, he would have died. How swift are the 
years ! Thirty-six backward, and last night the fair skies weeping, 
he was saying his good-by to Springiield neighbors. Thirty-six 
years to-morrow, and in the House of Representatives, while hate 
howled its impotence, the electoral vote was oiScially declared. 
Let not that time of astonishment and trembling be named with- 



ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 113 

out recalling how Dix and Holt and Stanton stood fast, while Floyd 
and Thompson and the rest were rotting like maggots from a 
corpse! And with the true in deathless fame name that last of 
the better Whigs — that rugged Virginian — Winfield Scott, whose 
loyalty alone safeguarded the all-important seat of government, 
and who, when Wigfall asked whether "if for an overt act he 
would dare arrest a Senator of the United States," replied : "No ; I 
would blow him to hell!" Such determination sent the familiar 
spirits of secession to their own place. There was a "dread Scott" 
decision worth having. 

Far more, gentlemen, than we are wont to realize, does the 
dissemination of their whole biographies spread the influence and 
perpetuate the motives of our lamented and departed leaders. 
Through all the first half of the century the popular knowledge of 
Washington thus diffused was an incalculable, however unrecog- 
nized, force in educating that loyal sentiment lying back of the 
tremendous resolution which the sixties registered and fulfilled. 
Speaking of the hold had upon him by the story of the Jersey 
campaign, Lincoln himself said : "I remember thinking that these 
men must have been encouraged by something uncommon to suffer 
so willingly." 

The lately issued volume that has gathered so much that is new 
and nearly all that can be authentic concerning Lincoln's early 
life merits our fullest attention. With every item and shred of 
such a story every American heart should be familiar. But to my 
thinking the numerous and various portraitures, many of them not 
before printed, are of pre-eminent importance. These even alone, 
in a sequence which clearly exhibits the development of his char- 
acter, contain the supreme biography. The last seven years of his 
life are in those likenesses; there is the story of the great war. 
His brow changes from 1861 to 1864 as if under the pressure of 



114 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

thrice as many years. And under the shadow and palimpsest 
of strife is — peace ! His representative responsibility for a people's 
trial and doubt and victory is told there, and 

"There was manhood in his look 
That murder could not kill." 

What a personality, and what a story! How acutely, how ex- 
haustlessly fascinating in its pathos! My poor sickle can only 
glean. At first, as we think of his heredity and environment, 
we wonder how such a man could have issued from such cir- 
cumstances; but, reflecting, we discern that those antecedents were 
not accidental, but providential, and that the God who intended 
the result furnished the discipline. 

Sprung from the loins of the people to be their leader and com- 
mander, he was one by whom it shall always mean more to be 
an American and a man! God was the tutor of this great com- 
moner, and, as he so often said, "God knows what is best." One 
of that God's surprises — his career — is a standing rebuke of all 
dilettante idleness and freezes the sneer upon the thin lips of 
caste. He inherited his father's frame and his mother's heart as 
his sole fortune. They were enough. They gave him, as his pre- 
eminent traits, that courage and that sympathy which were the 
outfit of a peerless manhood. 

Humanly speaking, he was never brought up — he came up by 
the hardest struggle, dismal lack and stark necessity. But up 
he came, and up he stands forever, distinctly the typical Amer- 
ican nobleman. Let those who would hold the stirrup of alien 
underlings and play the flunkey to titular rank, however rank 
its ignobility, summon their scant brains to consider this in- 
digenous soul and to learn that no cradle of Plantagenet or 



ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 115 

Hanover, of Bourbon, Hapsburg or Brandenburg, ever rocked so 
much of immortal renown. 

Opportunity for the lowliest to become the loftiest — this is the 
lesson of that frontier hovel. Spite of all contrary opinion, true 
beauty and integrity of manhood is not incompatible either with 
harsh beginnings or with the strenuous exactions of affairs. His 
education, as Lincoln said, was ''picked up under the pressure of 
necessity." Of school attendance one year was all he had. But 
always a learner, he came at last in practical wisdom to be a 
scholar, and to the last day of his life he grew in mental and moral 
stature. How must that example of painful struggle toward self- 
improvement sham.e the most of us ! For who of us has made his 
best of those advantages for which this backwoodsman pined in 
vain? 

His books were chiefly these: Burns, "The Pilgrim's Progress," 
Shakespeare, Weems' "Life of Washington," the English Bible. 
But these he knew. Of the Bible he memorized much. Its style 
and natural phrase were at his large command, and its supreme 
ideas, as well as its elastic idiom, gave power to many of his most 
critical utterances. This apparatus of education, gentlemen, if 
small, was not meagre — allegory, humor, moral imagination, 
dramatic feeling, patriotic history, folk-lore, devotion — these were 
in those few but potent books. He mastered his material, and 
one language sufficed him. No one can ponder the substance, 
the solidity, the tact, the appeal of the majestic second inaugural 
and not feel that here was a master of arpeggios. Who, to take 
an earlier instance, can consider his acumen and precision of 
emendation in the matter of Seward's State despatch over the 
matter of the Trent affair and not confess Lincoln as "cunning 
with the pen" as he was astute in diplomacy? Carlyle wrote, "All 
true greatness is melancholy." There ran through this introspect- 



ii6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

ive soul a deep vein of sentiment. The sad-faced child became a 
brooding and silently yearning man. He saw visions and dreamed 
dreams. His adroit humor is pathetic as we think how truly he 
could have said, after Desdemona, 

"I am not merry; but I do beguile 
The thing I am by seeming otherwise." 

There was a minor note which gave the people's heart a near 
access to him which few had as individuals; for most reverently 
we can say that he, too, was "a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief." Much misery had taught him mercy, and there is 
a most plaintive longing in that admonition to his little Tad — 
"My bey, I would have the whole human race your friends and 
mine." Lincoln's love of that poem, "Oh, Why Should the Spirit 
of Mortal be Proud?" has re-written it, and not for "Trilby," but 
for his sake who loved it dearly, shall we still sing "Ben Bolt." 
For he, too, had his "sweet Alice" — long dead. 

Farmhand, flatboatman, store clerk, land surveyor, militiaman, 
country lawyer, then all and at one the heart and the will of a 
mighty party — nay, of a people; then the object-lesson of the 
world; then the lament of a generation; then — immortal! The 
path fitted the goal. For his sake, if for no other, the Potomac 
and the Ohio and the Sangamon are the "three principal rivers" of 
America. What a time was that for which he came to his more 
than kingdom! Curtis said: "The world sneered as it listened 
and laughed at a republic founded upon liberty and afraid to speak 
the word at home. Our feet had slipped to the very brink of the 
pit and were scorched with fire." The Missouri compromise had 
been repealed, the "dread Scott" decision had seemed to make the 



ADDRESS OF MELANCTPION V/OOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 117 

Ship of State a slave-ship! The President's place, as one has 
sternly said, was vacant, while James Buchanan drew the salary! 

The Chicago convention of 1860 did not at all realize what it 
had done in placing- its banner in Lincoln's hand; but which one 
of all his apparent peers could so have borne it? Neither he nor 
the wisest could then have comprehended his mission or its 
grandeur. But he went on his way "with firmness to do the 
right as God gave him to see the right," and the common people, 
who once had flocked to listen to his court pleas, still flocked and 
still listened to their leader. 

With what broad sagacity he composed that first cabinet, and 
with what surprise they discovered the calm self-reliance and de- 
term.ination of their master! From the onset his remarkable es- 
timating of men, his keen perception of aptitude, his dignified 
independence, his finality of cautious decision, stood revealed. 
No "boss" whispered behind that chair which some before him 
had occupied, but which Lincoln filled successfully. He re- 
deemed the chief magistracy from those associations of mediocrity 
which a Tyler, a Polk, a Pierce had imposed upon him. Such 
as this unshorn Nazarite be all our Presidents to come! Seward 
had imagined that for himself to be Secretary of State was to be 
first in the cabinet groiip, but he learned that even he was as a 
boy driving with a father's hands over his upon the reins! He 
recognized the situation, as later Stanton also did — Stanton, so 
magnanimously appointed, and whose affection was at once his 
own rarest honor and to his chief the most masculine tribute. 
Would that Chase had been as great ! 

Then came the solemn "So help me God!" of that fourth of 
March, and, when, after the long suspense during the first part of 
that deliverance, the shout of the concourse broke out in floods, 
rebuking the faces of disloyal hate that glowed about, this Union 



ii8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

knew that it had found not only an official, but a man ! As over 
Israel's first king, "Certain sons of Belial said, 'How shall this 
man save us?' but he held his peace." Fast went the strange 
foreboding days until there came the hour of that other Ken- 
tuckian — Robert Anderson! Then rang out the awful trumpet, 
and every good hand was at the halliards. Tip went the flag to 
the watchword of John A. Dix. This city was scarlet with it as 
never since — save once. The Sixth Massachusetts marched out 
of your Astor House to the tune of "Yankee Doodle !" After her 
fwept your own true Seventh to the Capitol. Stephen A. Douglas 
declared: "When hostile armies are marching under new and 
odious banners against our common country, the shortest road to 
peace lies in the most unanimous and stupendous preparation for 
war!" There leaped the live thunder, and every rattling crag 
of liberty answered it. 

Sounded out mightily the first of those proclamations demand- 
ing the great price of freedom! From the lumber camps of the 
Androscoggin and the Escanaba; from the quarries of Vermont 
and New Hampshire; from the fishing smacks of Massachusetts 
and the spindles of Rhode Island ; from the colleges of Connecticut 
and New York and Ohio; from the mines of Pennsylvania and 
Michigan; from the counting rooms of the cities of Sam Adams 
and Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin, and cities a hundred 
more; from the Adirondacks and the AUeghanies and the far 
Sierras; from village and prairie and lakeside and highway, there 
rose the answer of the free — "All up !" The old Liberty Bell that 
had so long slumbered, found its voice again. The giant was 
awake. 

Froude, of whom Birrel writes that his "antipathies seemed 
stronger than his sympathies," declared in February, 1864, 
"Washington might well have hesitated to draw the sword against 



ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 119 

England could he have seen the country which he made as we see 
it now." The trouble with some Britons, gentlemen (thank God 
not all), has been that they spelled the word prophets with an 
"f" and an "i." There was another England — the England of the 
Prince Consort and of John Bright. But desperate indeed were 
those ransoming years. In 1860 we only hoped that we had a 
country. In 1865 we knew that it was more than we had asked 
or thought. 

While the plough rusted and the anvil was dumb, one high soul 
never doubted nor hesitated. Leading always, even when he 
seemed only to follow, he was the piston behind which the pulse 
of the people pushed irresistibly. Firm, conservative, moderate, 
sure, this great emancipator understood that there is both a time 
to wait and a time to strike. Too swift for some, too slow for 
others, his vast common sense, his judgment, that became an in- 
tuition, perceived both the right word and the right moment. 
Wendell Phillips, whose electricity was so much of it generated 
by the reaction between metal and vitriol, called Lincoln a "tor- 
toise"; but Lowell said "he knew to bide his time." 

At a New Orleans slave auction in the forties, he had said of 
that devilish system : "If I ever get a chance to hit it, I will hit 
it hard." When the hour struck he crushed it forever, and now 
there is none so low but does him reverence. Can you not see 
him (when at last the dream of Sophism was broken to awake 
and find itself empty), pressing the streets of fallen Richmond, 
and can you not hear that aged negro : "May the good Lord bress 
you, Massa Linkum"? Silently the great man raises his hat, 
bows and passes by. There fell the benediction of a disenthralled 
race, and there responded the salutation of a martyr — the true 
"Moriturus, saluto" of a gladiator in the Arena of Time and from 
Tinder the shadows of Death. 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



What words, what elemental words, he spake — this ■uncondi- 
tional man! What a repertoire is his untarnished phrases of 
patriotism and high devotion! His proclamations were battles, 
conclusions, anthems ! Apt in adage and apothegm, his illustrated 
speech, so homely yet so constructive, was like that of ^sop, and 
his plain wisdom was most of all like that of Socrates. ''I have 
talked with great men," said Lincoln, "and I do not see how they 
differ from others." No, not in talk, in meaning, nor in wit, so 
much as in the will to use it wisely. Lincoln had that true 
oratory which in Webster's words, "does not consist in speech, but 
exists in the man, in the occasion, and in the subject." Candor, 
conviction, clearness — these were his; and of him David Davis 
said: "All facts and principles had to run through the crucible 
of an iniiexible judgment." 

This homely oracle, though never clouded by abstractions, was 
withal a supreme idealist. He saw above the storm the white- 
winged Angel of Peace, and therefore with all his heart and soul 
he urged forward the necessary war. 

Having handled every rung of the ladder, Lincoln was in all 
things practical. He would jettison any theory to save the fact. 
Intense, yet tranquil; temperate, yet unaustere; bold, but never 
rash; informal, but self-respecting; as modest as resolute, his were 
no footlight graces. 

He felt for others, and plain men trusted him by instinct. Him- 
self walking upon hot ploughshares, he smiled and looked up! 
He loved the whole nation and the whole nation now loves him. 
In him the South that was^ lost its ablest friend, and the South 
that is, has come to know it. 

In the study of that lofty individuality I note first his courage. 
Of desponding temperament, he was the stubborn conqueror of 
his own fears. That critical utterance concerning "a house di- 



ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, DD. 121 



vided" recalls it. Manipulators shrank, time-servers winced, 
friends protested, but with all the fearlessness of Luther at Worms 
he said: "By this statement I will stand or fall." That declara- 
tion was at once a war and a peace — peace with honor. There 
this Atlas bowed his back to lift a world! Detraction and jeers 
but steadied him. His was that forbearance which, in the words 
of Governor Black's late inaugural, "is the highest proof of 
courage." When the timid press ranted, raved, caricatured, he 
told the story of the man who prayed in a frightful thunderstorm, 
"Oh, Lord, a little more light and a little less noise." He replied 
to nervous advisers in 1863: "Grant tells me by the Fourth of 
July he v/ill take Vicksburg, and I believe he will do it; and he 
shall have the chance." It was done. In April, 1864, he put 
his whole confidence in the same Grant, saying to him as he went 
down to that awful reaping, "With a brave army and a just 
cause, may God sustain you!" When Early, in 1864, checked but 
not stopped by the tremendous resistance of Lew Wallace at 
Monocacy, thundered at the very gates of Washington, Lincoln 
never doubted, but waited for the Sixth Corps and deliverance. 

His courage was rooted in his sublime faith. It was excep- 
tional, absolute, grand. It moved mountains. His central power 
was moral. Herndon said, "His conscience is his ruling attribute." 
Mr. L. E. Chittenden in his invaluable "Reminiscences" has col- 
lected in a whole chapter Lincoln's own and many words as a 
devout believer in the power of the Highest. It should forever 
stop the mouths of gainsayers, whether infidel or theological. 
"Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do," was his con- 
stant attitude, and than that naught can deeper go. 

This is of record: ¥pon the third day after the "Peach Orchard," 
Lincoln called upon the wounded Sickles. Talking of the great 
slaughter, with streaming eyes the President told of his own as- 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



surance of the result of his praying in his own locked room as 
never before: "I told God that I had done all that I could, and 
that now the result was in His hands ; that if the country was to 
be saved it was because He so willed it. The burden rolled off 
my shoulders, my intense anxiety was relieved, and in its place 
came a great trustfulness; and that was why I could not doubt 
the result of Gettysburg." Others may say for themselves what 
they like of that; I say that this is the demonstration of the 
anointed — of the Nation's High Priest. 

Diplomat, strategist, master of speech, monarch of occasions, 
humane, believing, often did he weep; but never did he flinch or 
falter; and when he was not it was with ''abundant entrance" 
that he went to find his Anne Rutledge and his Lord! "Oh, 
piteous end!" "Fallen, cold and dead" the captain lies. That 
face, with all its rugged honesty, its homely beauty, its lines of 
leadership in suffering, its august peace, is gone! The long col- 
umns that tread Pennsylvania Avenue, with the smoke of the great 
sacrifice behind them, shall not salute the chief. 

But those other squadrons invisible that crowd the air — the 
loyal legions of those who have passed from the camp-fire to the 
Hosanna, from the blood-red bayonet to the wreath of amaranth, 
"the great cloud of witnesses" — there he is, passed over to the 
ranks of the immortal great. At its very meridian, snatched from 
our skies, that soul shines on and will shine "till the stars are 
cold." 

The completions of such a life are not withheld — they are trans- 
fused. We are to-day what Lincoln helped us to become. That 
God he so trusted and served grant that this may be the nation 
Lincoln strove and died to make it! His work is not yet done. 
That tale, fit for the foundation of a mighty drama, worthy of a 
deathless epic, will never be exhausted while the last American 



ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 123 



remains who is a man. The hills sink as we leave them, the moun- 
tains rise. 

Once more, all true Eepublicans, by this immutable renown 
are you bidden to that patriotism to which all other narrower 
titles are but subordinate and instrumental. This people's man 
certifies to us that the republic must voice the people, else it 
shall sink into autocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, anarchy. God 
purge us of bad men and their bad ways. 

Still sings Columbia: 

"Bring me men to match my mountains, 
Bring me men to match my plains ; 
Men with empires in their purpose. 

And new era in their brains; 
Pioneers to clear thought's marshlands 

And to cleanse old error's fen; 
Bring me men to match my mountains — 
Bring me men!" 

We shall be just as good a party as we are determined to be. 
We shall have just as good leaders as we deserve — no better. We 
must summon to our ranks and be worthy to keep there all who 
love our nation's truth. We must be sworn anew not to sur- 
render our independence to unauthorized proxies. We must hold 
to the most exact audit the men we select and trust — to watch, 
to cheer, to correct, to promote or to depose them. 

"Oh, Ship of State! 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 

* 5|: * * * * >;: 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears. 
Are all with thee." 



V 



THE TWELFTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1898 



Address of 
HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 



, ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 

Senator Beveridge was bom on a farm in Adams 
County,©., in 1862; though after the war the family- 
moved to Illinois. His early life was one of constant 
struggle and privation in the eSort to secure an educa- 
tion. At fifteen he had already worked as plow-boy, 
teamster, common laborer and logger; but he managed 
to attend high school at Sullivan, 111., and in 1885 grad- 
uated from De Pauw University. He read law in the 
office of Senator McDonald; was admitted to the Bar 
and rapidly made a name for himself in the conduct 
of cases. He is regarded as one of the best campaign 
speakers in the Republican party and is a frequent 
magazine contributor. Since 1899 he has been U. S. 
Senator from Indiana. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: To-day, when the Re- 
publican party is marshalling its forces for its second great battle 
for civilization, it is an inspiration to remember that Abraham 
Lincoln was a Republican. He was a Republican in order that 
he might most truly be an American. He was a Republican be- 
cause Republicanism meant equal opportunities for all — because 
it meant the rights of man reduced from theory to practice. 
Abraham Lincoln was a Republican because the Republican party 
was the first organization that ever asserted and accomplished the 
nobility of labor — the first to put the plough, the loom, the anvil 
and the pick in the heraldry of honor and of glory. He was a 
Republican because the Republican party was practical — because 
it changed dreams into deeds, proposed as well as opposed, builded 
where it tore away, and destroyed only when destruction would 
not be fatal to that which should remain. This soul of the com- 
mon people was a Republican because Republicanism meant the 
nation triumphant over sections; because Republicanism meant the 
organized conscience of the people guided by their sanity ; because 
it meant the common man working out the problems of civilization 
through the methods of conservatism. Abraham Lincoln was a 
Republican because he believed in a national government strong 
enough to live; because he believed that maintenance of law needs 
no apology; because he believed, to use his own words, that 



128 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

"there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by a mob." He 
was a Republican because he was a logician of progress, and, 
therefore, understood that a home market is the major premise, a 
foreign market the minor premise, and American supremacy 
throughout the world the conclusion of the great argument of 
commerce. He was a Eepublican because, above national pros- 
perity, above national peace, dearer than all besides, Abraham 
Lincoln counted the honor of the American people and raised his 
warning hand to Congress even when war called out the emer- 
gency financial powers of government. ^ And our hero was a Re- 
publican because the Republican party meant a new hope to all 
mankind; because in the word Republican, as Abraham Lincoln 
uttered it, was mingled the music of falling fetters, the songs of 
toiler in factory and field, the shouts of happy children made heirs 
of opportunity and the anthem of God's plain people raised to their 
just estate. This was our leader — this is our master still. Let 
those who will adopt repudiation's financial creed, embrace the 
sectional doctrines dug from Calhoun's grave and accept the gos- 
pel of hate preached from pessimism's pulpit. But "with malice 
toward none and charity for all," the host of conservatism, called 
the Republican party, believing ever in the eternal good, will re« 
ceive our principles, our policy and our inspiration from Abraham 
Lincoln, the first of Republicans. 

Abraham Lincoln is the nation's well-beloved, and so all men 
write unto his life their individual opinions. But we the heirs of 
his party and his purposes, have a right to know the truth. This 
great achiever was practical. When preparing for his work he 
said: "How to do something is the desideratum." And, seeking 
an answer he found that, where manhood suffrage prevails, no 
thought can be written into law, no purpose find fulfillment ex- 
cept through that organization of those who think alike, called a 



ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 129 



political party. And so he believed in this co-operation, in prin- 
ciple, that brotherhood of belief called partisanship. He was him- 
self a partisan — the partisan of a cause — that cause the saving 
of a nation. All else compared to that was unimportant. That 
was why he wrote that impatient tempest of patriotism, Horace 
Greeley, "My paramount object is to save the Union." That was 
the issue that burned from every star in the flag. Until that was 
settled — until the nation's life was safe — he asked patriots every- 
where to forget everything but that and become in every election 
the partisans of civilization. And to-day, when the honor of 
American people is the issue; to-day, when free institutions are 
on trial ; to-day, when questions that search out the very heart of 
organized society are involved, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln 
commands all who agree on the principles of conservatism to for- 
get incidental differences and strike together everywhere and al- 
ways until repudiation, sectionalism and the spirit of class are 
utterly exterminated. Any issue that beclouds the issue of all 
issues is an instrument of defeat. In Lincoln's day one issue was 
supreme — loyalty to the nation. Had he not acted on that, and 
that alone, New York to-day would have been the port of a sec- 
tion instead of a metropolis of the mightiest nation on the globe. 

To-day disintegrations are advocated. Bizarre beliefs abound. 
Old convictions are being unanchored. And it is time the steady 
elements of the American people answered the command of conser- 
vatism to "Fall in." We hear of a new Declaration of Independ- 
ence. I prefer the old Declaration of the fathers. We need no 
new philosophy of society of politics to-day. We only need a 
renaissance of common sense. The political philosophy of Abra- 
ham Lincoln is guide enough. If you ask me to state that phil- 
osophy in a phrase I should answer that his life spells out these 
two immortal words^ patriotic conservatism. He knew that the 



130 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

conservative elements of the American people are always in the 
majority. No matter what individual views on incidentals might 
be, he knew that the sight of the country's imperiled flag would 
marshal those elements into an irresistible host. He knew that 
they need only to see the main issue and they will respond. And 
so out of the men of all parties who agreed on the issue of integ- 
rity of the nation, Abraham Lincoln fashioned that splendid party 
of conservatism which met the emergency of war and won, met 
the emergency of reconstruction and won, met the emergency of 
resumption and won, met the problem of national prosperity for 
thirty years and solved it, and stands to-day strengthened as it 
was created by the conservative elements of all parties, ready to 
meet the emergency of repudiation and industrial chaos and tri- 
umph as of old. Across the page of events the spirit of Lincoln 
has written the mission of the Republican party. The mission is 
conservatism — the rejection of extremes — the conduct of the gov- 
ernment by common honesty and common sense rather than by 
fanaticism and revenge. Conservatism is merely progress by the 
processes of growth. It is government by experience instead of 
experiment. It is moderation instead of violence. 

How does the present situation require Lincolnian conservatism ? 

On the one hand the tendency of the Democracy of to-day is 
toward destruction. The Huns and Vandals among them are on 
the march. There is an implied promise of piracy in every utter- 
ance of some of the leaders. They awaken expectations which 
nothing but the abolition of property and the reversal of civiliza- 
tion can fulfill. Every sane man knows that free silver alone 
would not quench the flames which reckless extremists are fanning. 
The readjustment of society is the ultimate answer to the implied 
question which the new commune thoughtlessly puts to civiliza- 
tion. That is one extreme. 



ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 131 

On the other hand, there are abuses of capital which furnish 
the pillagers a war cry — improper uses of riches which the 
Catilines use as examples to discredit all wealth; vulgar ostenta- 
tions of money which unsheathe envy and whet hatred ; a meddling 
with the making and the execution of the laws; a controlling of 
the natural laws of trade by unlawful devices. But these financial 
developments are not structural defects. Free institutions are not 
responsible for them. They are merely a natural tendency de- 
veloped beyond their rightful sphere and requiring rebuke, regu- 
lation and restraint. These developments have no party, gentle- 
men. They use all parties for their purpose. There are only two 
things in civilization which are absolutely non-partisan — a mug- 
wump and a trust. 

What is the policy of the Republican party in this situation? 
Go, as Lincoln always did, to the plain people and learn from 
them. They will tell you that our policy is Lincolnian conser- 
vatism. Abraham Lincoln's plain people are weary with both ex- 
tremes. They demand that the party of Abraham Lincoln shall, 
with one hand, take by the throat that idiot Greed, who gives 
the demagogue his incendiary text, and with the other hand take 
by the throat the demagogue himself and knock their heads to- 
gether until robbery is knocked out of the one and anarchy out 
of the other, and common sense and patriotism knocked into the 
heads of both. The producing millions demand a truce to needless 
agitation. They demand an opportunity to create prosperity. 
They demand that the honor of the nation be put beyond the reach 
of the demagogue or fool. They repudiate revenge as a motive 
of political action. They expect improper commercial develop- 
ments to be corrected without violating the principles upon which 
civilization rests. They demand laws so just and so equally en- 
forced that the lips of sedition will be padlocked by the peace they 



132 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

bring-. In short, Abraham Lincoln's plain people demand Abra- 
ham Lincoln's conservatism, and Abraham Lincoln's party is here 
to give it to them. 

The plain people! There is the source of Abraham Lincoln's 
wisdom. Lincoln, the rail-splitter, and Emerson, the scholar, 
agreed. The unprejudiced instinct of the masses is unerring. 
The common sense of the plain people, who in peace create the 
wealth, and in v/ar carry the muskets of the republic, is ultimate- 
ly an unfailing guide. Abraham Lincoln was one of these. Their 
conscience was his oracle. Their thought was his counsel. He 
preferred the matured judgment of the ploughman, the blacksmith 
and the merchant to the opinion of any doctrinaire who ever 
lived. And the lesson of his life to the party he so loved is to 
take our orders from the plain people who founded the Republican 
party, and for whom alone this republic is worth preserving. 

Abraham Lincoln coined the phrase "The plain people." He be- 
queathed it to us, and it is ours. It is and shall forever be the 
Republican party's shibboleth. But demagogues have learned its 
power, and used it, too, until, like liberty, crimes are committed 
in its name and its Lincolnian meaning is obscured. The profes- 
sionally miserable are not the plain people. The "plain people" 
are not those who preach the gospel of despair; not those whose 
trade is discontent and whose occupation is idleness. A man does 
not become one of the plain people by merely getting into debt — 
nor cease to be one of them by getting out of debt. Rags are not 
a necessary badge of the "plain people," although a pauper may be 
one of them — nor is wealth, although a millionaire may be one 
of the "plain people," too. 

But Abraham Lincoln's plain people are those who understand 
that labor is the law of life for all, be they railroad presidents, or 
section hands. They are those who believe in that old phrase, "the 



ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 133 

brotherhood of man." They are those who acknowledge and ac- 
cept the opportunities of American institutions. The plain peo- 
ple of Lincoln's love are they who understand that Liberty did not 
intend to abolish Labor, Thought and Thrift, that blessed trinity 
that presides over all prosperity. They are these who believe that 
Nature should not be repealed — those who do not expect law to 
do for them what they should do for themselves. These are the 
plain people that produced an Abraham Lincoln and a Republican 
party, and it is time that those who misuse the term should be 
reminded of what it means^ and rebuked in the reminding. 

Abraham Lincoln was the spirit of the plain people incarnate 
and therefore he was the spirit of nationality incarnate. For the 
plain people know no sections — they only know American citizen- 
ship. Sections only exist in the minds of politicians too small for 
the nation. Abraham Lincoln knew that the people's Constitu- 
tion begins with "We, the people"; that the people's nation "guar- 
antee to every State a Eepublican form of government," and so 
he sent the plain people, wearing the nation's uniform and carry- 
ing the nation's flag wherever the nation's Constitution required it, 
and asked no treasonable governor's permission. He taught the 
American people that the golden rule of patriotism is unity. This 
imperial city is not New York's alone — she is the pride of the en- 
tire nation. Your prosperity depends on the prosperity of the 
American people. You dare not be selfish even if you would. 
We heal men talking about New York and its business men want- 
ing to injure the American people. How absurd! since injury to 
the American people is suicide to you, and since injury to you is 
misfortune to them. Your v.asest selfishness is to help the gen- 
eral welfare. Whatever truly blesses Nebraska blesses New York 
as well. You are not "the enemy's country." New York is too 
great to be anybody's enemy. To be an enemy to an American 



134 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

citizen is to be an enemy to yourself. We of the Central West 
would not let you be our enemy even if you wished to. Why? 
Because you are too useful, and because you are an American 
port. No foreign ship can ever shell Indianapolis — no foreign 
force invade it. Yet, because we believe as Lincoln believed, be- 
cause the Pacific Coast is our coast and Sandy Hook American soil, 
Indiana and the republic's heart is in favor of coast defenses and 
a navy that can render every port of the republic as secure as In- 
dianapolis itself. And I will say, for the benefit of Mr. Roose- 
velt, that we are not only in favor of the ships, but we are in 
favor of dry-docks good enough to hold them. For, although 
we are landsmen, we know enough to know that a ship without a 
dry-dock is like a man without a wife — it cannot travel far with- 
out getting out of repair. If invasion should come to you the 
West would give her blood to help defend you, our brothers of 
the flag, and we prefer to help protect you first. All this is true 
because at the firesides of the West the national spirit of Abra- 
ham Lincoln is dwelling still, and the new sectionalism has not 
gangrened our hearts. All this is true because the virile, un- 
spoiled and exhaustless West, that gave you Morton, Grant and 
Lincoln, is still true to their teachings and, therefore, still Re- 
publican. 

Abraham Lincoln knew no class — he only knew the people. At- 
tempts to divide the land into sections and the people into classes 
is accursed, whether the time be 1860 or 1896. The Constitution 
says, "We, the people"; therefore, whoever says "We are the 
classes"' is a traitor to American institutions. Classes in a repub- 
lic is a contradiction in terms. What is the dividing line? 
Wealth? If so, how much? If a man is poor is he one of the 
masses ? When labor, thought and thrift have filled his pockets is 



ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 135 

he one of the classes ? If so, all men may destroy the dividing line. 
If not, there is no line to destroy. 

Yet Lincoln's name is used to incite labor against capital. Let 
Lincoln's words rebuke the maligners of his thought and deeds. 
This is what he said: "That men who are industrious and sober 
and honest in the pursuit of their own interests should, after a 
while, accumulate capital, and, after that, should be allowed to 
enjoy it, is right." "Labor is the superior of capital, and de- 
serves much higher consideration"; but "capital has its rights, 
which are as worthy of protection as any other rights." That was 
Lincoln's idea. Labor is as necessary as food; capital is as neces- 
sary as civilization. Nothing but malevolence would create 
hatred between them, or prejudice against either. It is as in- 
famous to lay the practices of financial pirates at the door of cap- 
ital as it is to lay the deeds of anarchists and outlaws at the door 
of labor. Evils of wealth there are, and the party of Abraham 
Lincoln proposes to remedy them by Lincoln's methods of conser- 
vatism. Evils of wealth there are, and the American Robespierres 
propose, not to remedy, but to annihilate by reaction and revenge. 
The whole issue is summed up in this: The Republican party 
means evolution; the Democratic means revolution. And in a 
republic there can be no excuse for revolution. 

Lincoln loved the people so well that nothing was too good 
for them — not even the truth. "I have faith in the people. Let 
them know the truth and the country is safe." These are Lin- 
coln's words, spoken for this very hour. He did not regard it as 
a criminal act to buy a government bond. His chief financial con- 
cern was to get them sold. He regarded the promises of this 
nation of honest men as the most sacred things in all this world. 
He knew that the faith of American institutions is written in 
the American people's obligations. Why? The bonds of a mon- 



135 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

archy are the promises of the people's masters; if they default it 
is only another king dishonored. But the bonds of a republic 
are the promises of the people; if they default free institutions are 
dishonored. Abraham Lincoln believed that the obligations of the 
American people should be made the most attractive investment 
and kept the best security known to man. So does the Republican 
party. Abraham Lincoln believed that they should be sold to and 
held by the people; so does the Republican party. Abraham Lin- 
coln loved the people too much to permit their promissory notes 
to be libeled even by the Senate of the "United States; and so does 
the people's chosen successor to Lincoln's place and principles, 
William McKinley. If any man doubts where the Republican 
party stands, let him inquire where Abraham Lincoln would stand 
if he were alive to-day, and there he will find the Republican party 
"standing like a stone wall." 

Abraham Lincoln was as sound on finance as he was on liberty. 
He had indulged in thought on the subject of money. He had 
read the history of his country. And history and thought inspired 
this prince of purity to use language for which an Altgeld court- 
martial would have convicted him of being a hireling of the 
money power. For Lincoln told Congress that redundant issues 
of paper money had "increased prices beyond real values, thereby 
augmenting the cost of living to the injury of labor, and the cost 
of supplies to the injury of the whole country." These are Lin- 
coln's words, and their keenness cuts the heart out of inflation, 
and inflation is all there is of Bryanesque finance. History and 
thought had taught Abraham Lincoln that inflated prices mean im- 
mediate loss to labor and ultimate loss to all. He had mastered 
first principles. He knew that a government cannot make money; 
that the only way a government gets money is to take it by taxa- 
tion or to get it by borrowing; that if the government can make 



ADDRESS OF HON, ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 137 

money all taxation is a crime; and that if it cannot make money 
its credit is a principal asset. And, taking first principles for his 
premises, he stated the necessary conclusion — for Lincoln was a 
logician and did not stop on the road of his reasoning to refresh 
himself with his own rhetoric — and become intoxicated on mixed 
metaphors. He did not understand this latter-day logic which 
eliminates the conclusion from a syllogism, substitutes a philippic 
for the syllogism itself, calls the whole process oratory, and writes 
quod erat demonstrandum beneath a jeremiad. But he stated his 
conclusion with truth's simplicity and said: "A return to specie 
payments at the earliest period should ever be kept in view. 
Fluctuations in the value of currency are always injurious, and to 
reduce this fluctuation to the lowest possible point will always be 
a leading purpose in wise legislation." That is not the language of 
Wall street, gentlemen — nor of Lombard street — it is the solemn 
warning of the savior of the country. And Abraham Lincoln said 
all this, too, when the angel of war sowed fire and death through- 
out the land, and the nation bound up its wounds with the money 
of emergency. Shall we depart from his principles now, after a 
generation of prosperity and in a time of profoundest peace? By 
our belief in his wisdom, no ! We appeal from his misinterpreters 
to Lincoln's very words. We appeal from passion to reason. 
We appeal from sectionalism to nationality. In the name of Lin- 
coln we appeal to that infallible judge — the conscience of the 
conservative masses whom our hero loved to call the plain people 
of the republic ! With that ultimate judge, whose voice is indeed 
the voice of God, we fearlessly leave the rendering of this decree 
of destiny. 

Mr. President and gentlemen, standing at the daybreak of the 
twentieth century, Abraham Lincoln's party tells free institutions 
to take courage. With his life as an inspiration, with his prin- 



138 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

ciples as a guide, we will, we can know no defeat. We fight a 
battle of patriotic affection. Even our opponents are our brothers 
— kinsmen in liberty. We appeal to them as did our master *'with 
malice toward none and charity for all." In our hearts there is no 
hate. We seek no partisan victory which does not mean a healing 
to the nation and a hope to all mankind. We are enlisted in a 
holy crusade of patriotism. We go forth as our fathers did at 
Lincoln's call, to preserve and not destroy. We fight because we 
love and not because we hate. With a past with memories so 
heroic and so glorious, so sacred and so sweet that mankind has 
set them next to the memories of the Cross — memories which that 
old sword that father left to some of us calls upon from our full 
hearts — memories of Donelson and Vicksburg, of Mission Ridge 
and Appomattox and all those heroic fields of glory — and, finally, 
with memories of him whose name brings loving tears to every 
patriot's eye — of him, our leader, master, friend and friend of all 
mankind — with memories like those to chasten, ennoble and di- 
rect, we turn our faces full to the morning, ready to perform the 
mission which he gave into our keeping, "to bind up the nation's 
wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle," and 
to see "that a government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people shall not perish from this earth/' because it is the wisest, 
safest, purest, most prosperous and most honorable government 
known to man. 



THE THIRTEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 13, 1899 



Address of 



REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 



HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 

Dr. Duffield was born in Princeton, N. J., in 1854, " 

and is a graduate of Princeton University. Since 1891 
he has been pastor of the "Old First" Presbyterian 
Church, New York, and is prominent as a pulpit orator. 



ADDRESS OF 

REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 



Mr. President and Senator: It is altogether possible, sir, that 
the developments of history may teach us to reverse this order 
of address and address you as Mr. Senator and after that as Mr. 
President. It is not popularly supposed that a canon of the church 
is a rapid-iiring gun. 

This committee has touched me oif with very little warning 
to myself, and if the discharge should go wide of the mark, or if 
it should prove a blank cartridge, I hope you will credit that to 
the committee and not to myself. "Brethren," said an old negro 
minister, ''I have a three-dollar sermon and I have a two-dollar 
sermon, and before I preach I will have a collection taken up to 
find out which is most appropriate for this audience." The fact 
is, that for the present audience there is nothing that can be too 
good, but to-night, fellow Republicans, you will have to take sim- 
ply the best that I can hastily bring. 

The toast, as the president of the club has remarked, is an in- 
spiring one, and it is also an embarrassing one. The very name of 
Lincoln sets every drop of patriotic blood a-tingling. His story 
is the Iliad of our American history, and when the conflict of 
heroes upon the plain of Troy shall have been forgotten, many 
a heart with tear-wept impulse will read the simple chronicle of 
the life of that humble man who was honored of God to equip this 
great nation for the mighty task to which to-day the same finger 



142 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of God is beckoning her. I labor under the additional embar- 
rassment, fellow Republicans, of never having come in personal 
contact with this remarkable individuality. That little cockade 
of red, white and blue that was pinned upon the lapel of my boy- 
hood's jacket, the echo of the awful guns that roared upon Sum- 
ter, the stately swinging tread of armed men hurrying into the 
front of battle, the shuddering dawn of that April morning when 
the country was plunged into sackcloth by the news that her be- 
loved President lay dead, all these things are recollections of my 
earlier years that arise to perish never. But it was not my happy i 
lot to look upon the face of him who carried upon his heart in 
those faithful hours, the great destiny of this nation. And, gen- 
tlemen, to those who saw him then it seemed as though the vision 
of the eye somehow dulled the keener optic sense of the soul, and as 
we are carried from him by the passage of years he is lifted into 
clearer light and we can mark with truer measure the grandeur 
of his outline. 

Mr. Lincoln was little known before the Chicago convention of 
1860, when he was somehow to become the standard bearer of the 
Republican party in the throes of the great conflict which was be- 
ginning already to make itself felt throughout the land. At the 
bugle call of the new formed party there stepped down from an 
attorney's office in the far West a gaunt backwoodsman who en- 
tered the arena where Titans were stripping themselves for bat- 
tle, and there went up from every quarter of the compass an in- 
stinctive cry. Who is Abraham Lincoln? And from every quarter 
of the heavens there ran back answers that peal strangely in our 
ears to-night. Who is Abraham Lincoln? And the East replied 
he is only an accident; he is a creature of the mob; he is lifted 
upon the cross of an unreasonable enthusiasm, for all of the dele- 
gates to the Chicago convention from these Eastern states were 



ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 143 

on their way homeward to this seaboard, trailing in the dust the 
banner of the Empire State, and they could only see in Abraham 
Lincoln in that hour one who had with uncouth hand dashed the 
chaplet from the hands of the polished and splendid William 
Seward, and they could not but look upon him as the accident of 
the hour. Who is Abraham Lincoln ? 

And from the West came back the answer, he is an experiment. 
His neighbors had taken his measure; his friends knew that, 
though he was as shell-barked as hickory, he was just as solid at 
the heart and just as tough in every fibre of his character, but 
they also knew he was all unused to government, that he was 
not schooled in the niceties of the technicalities of diplomacy, 
and they knew that his election had been largely a victory of 
merit and had been due to the pride of neighborhood, that he was 
a new creation of that then young and rising West, that, feeling 
the power of its strength, was rejoicing as a strong man to run a 
race. Who is Abraham Lincoln ? And from the South there came 
back the bitter cry, he is the gauntlet flung in the very face of 
our most cherished institutions, he is the gage of battle; for re- 
member, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, 
it was that antediluvian period in our history when the office of 
President was vacant, and a party named Jimmy Buchanan was 
drawing the salary, it was the period in our national history 
when Adams, of Georgia, arose in the United States Senate and 
declared he would as soon kill the rest of his slaves at the foot 
of the Bunker Hill monument. But Mr. Adams forgot that where 
the Bunker Hill monument stands American liberty was bom, 
and ai her very birth she had strangled the twin serpents of 
tyranny and injustice, and that she had been clothing herself for 
all these years with the thoughts and sentiments of freedom, and 
all she needed was to be aroused to plant her war-shod foot upon 



144 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

the hydra-head of disunion and of slavery. But those, friends, 
were the days when the South v/as spoiling in its efforts after 
compromise, and so the nomination of Abraham Lincoln to the 
presidency was regarded in the South alone as the pretext for un- 
buckling the sacred girdle of our national union. There v/as an- 
other curious answer to this question, it came from the a,bolition- 
ists in the Republican party itself. Abraham Lincoln was not an 
extremist and therefore political fanatics branded him as a traitor. 
Abraham Lincoln was of all things a practical man, and he 
stood in politics for the best that could be had, not all that might 
be desirable, and, therefore, he was anathematized by political 
visionaries, and that little group of men whom you cannot but 
regret, high of thought, pure of feeling, strong in speech, voicing 
the emotions of their hearts through the lips of ¥/endell Phillips, 
great orator as he was, shrewd, shrewish, able to scold in periods 
of polished rhetoric and to utter sentiments that had in them more 
of the venom of Xantippe than of the wisdom of Socrates, when 
he heard of the work of the convention said, "What, that wolf 
hound?" Oh, friends, ask to-day who is Abraham Lincoln. Go 
the wide world through and ask any man who believes in simple 
manhood and bares his brow before the grandeur of character, 
who is Abraham Lincoln, and there will spring instantly into the 
mind a vision of that well-known and v/idely-loved face, that 
massive brow on which dark care seemed ever seated, those lus- 
trous, deep-set eyes with a wistful far-off look as though they 
pierce the minds of lesser men, that shaggy mane of unkempt hair, 
those cheeks sunken and scarred with sorrow and with sacrifices, 
that jaw so strongly set and hinged, all uniting in features over 
which the cloud and sunshine play across the depths of the un- 
fathomable sea. And the passing of years haloed that head with 
a more beautiful light, and v/e are learning the truth of what 



ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 145 

Walt Whitman long ago said, "Lincoln is the supremest charac- 
ter upon the crowded canvas of this nineteenth century." 

Mr. Lincoln was a lonely man. He can be put into no class. 
He rises in our history v/ith the hauteur, dignity and grandeur of 
an obelisk. He is the Melchisedek of our story, with no lineage 
and no ancestry. He towers above the rarely eminent men which 
God gave to his time. Round about Mr. Lincoln in his cabinet 
sat a trio of marvellous statesmen ; there was his courtly Secretary 
of State, Mr. Seward; there was his profound and sagacious Sec- 
retary of Treasury, Mr. Chase; there was his indomitable Sec- 
retary of War, Mr. Stanton. Mr. Seward was a skilled and an ex- 
perienced diplomat, but he simply learned that he was only prime 
minister after all and that Mr. Lincoln was President. Sagacious 
and experienced was that Secretary of Treasury, but Mr. Chase came 
to learn that the President was taking soundings in deeper waters 
than hio plummets could fathom. Most indomitable, like a god of 
war, was that Mars-like Stanton, clad in complete mail, but that 
inflexible resolution, when the kindly purpose of Mr. Lincoln's 
views came sweeping down on that iron plane — the miracle of the 
Scriptures was repeated and "The iron did swim." 

Mr. Lincoln was privileged to have on the field of battle a 
train of warriors worthy of being mentioned beside the royal 
fighters of King David of the old scripture days. There was that 
silent, sphinx-like man, whose tongue was still, whose sword was 
eloquent, whose deeds speak to the generations to come, who fought 
the fight of humanity in the dark glades of the Wilderness, and 
who fought the fight of the hero on the lonely summit of Mt. 
McGregor. There was the gallant Sheridan, whose fiery heart 
and earnest ardor outran the fleet-footed coursers of his com- 
mand; Sheridan, that splendid cavalier sans peur et sans reproche. 



146 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

the hero of the American army. There was the Cromwellian figure 
of Grant. 

Mr. Chairman, this splendid mirage of triumph has at last 
reached the eternal sea, and its memory shall never grow dim in. 
the hearts of the lovers of their country. Grand men! But we 
know now, whatever we thought then, that Mr. Lincoln was sweep- 
ing a wider horizon and was more nearly to the heart of things 
and understood better the impulses and the issues of that day than 
these great leaders of men. 

He was a lonely man. He was born to loneliness as a heritage. 
He was a great deal of the time in the dim recesses of the Western 
forests. He learned what the wilderness and the streams could 
teach him, and he grew up far from the conventional restraints 
of society ; he grew up under conditions where nothing was recog- 
nized as worthy except inherent manhood, and from his boyhood he 
drew the breath of loneliness. He was created with a hunger for 
knowledge, in his coonskin hat and buckskin suit he marched 
back and forth every day nine miles to the schoolhouse. He 
touched every side of life until he came to be the martyred Pres- 
ident. He was a hostler, a surveyor, a Mississippi boatman, a 
storekeeper, he was entered in a lawyer's office. He was like 
some great pine tree that winds its roots into a soil that is little 
but rock and feeding upon its inhospitable condition raises its 
columnar top into the sky, defying the storm and deriding the 
hostilities of the tempest. 

Let me tell you about the first speech that Mr. Lincoln is said 
to have made. His friends thought he would be a good candidate 
for the Legislature, so they put him into nomination ; he came from 
his retreat in the woodlands to a country town where he was to 
meet his opponent. As he approached the town he passed the 
house in which his antagonist dwelt. He saw rising from the roof 



ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 



M7 



a thin spire of iron, and he says, "What's that?" "Oh," said his 
friend, "that is a lightning rod," and he explained the uses of a 
lightning rod. Mr. Lincoln had never before seen such an ap- 
pendage to a dwelling, and he thought over it a good deal until his 
time to speak. The man against whom he was running was the 
first to occupy the platform, and he addressed his fellow-citizens by 
saying that they would not throw him overboard for this unknown 
man, whose life they did not know and with whom they were not 
acquainted, who had come up there from the unexplored tracts of 
the wilderness. Mr. Lincoln arose and said, "Friends, you don't 
know very much about me. I haven't had all the advantages that 
some of you have had, but," he said, "if you did know everything 
about me that you might know, you would be sure there was noth- 
ing in my character that made it necessary to put on my house a 
lightning rod to save me from the just vengeance of Almighty 
God!" 

There are three great papers in the story of English-speaking 
peoples that mark the progress of the race. One is the Magna 
Charta, and one the Declaration of Independence, and one the 
Emancipation Proclamation. The Magna Charta was produced by 
a company of belted knights with glittering steel, swords bared, 
with lances in rest; the Declaration of Independence was uttered 
to the world by a splendid company of scholars, but the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation was wrought out by one lonely man sus- 
taining a burden that might have borne to earth an ancient Atlas. 
It was the time when disaster and reverse was hovering over the 
American arms, when the great efforts that had been made to go 
on to Richmond resulted only in going back to Washington, and 
Lincoln, one eventful day, called together his cabinet. Said he to 
them, "Gentlemen, I have called you together to state to you what 
I propose to do." He said, "I do not ask any advice as to the 



I4S THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

doing' of it, but I shall be very glad to hear from you as to the 
best method in which it may be done, but I intend to issue this 
proclamation." He then read to them that paper which he had 
wrought out in solitude. A great hush fell upon the company of 
his advisers. Soon Mr. Seward suggested the change of a sen- 
tence. Mr. Bates said, "I think that this will cost you the fall 
election." Mr. Chase told how he thought certain parts of it 
might be made stronger. Mr. Seward finally said, "Mr. Lincoln, 
if you issue this proclamation just at this present time it will sound 
like a cry of despair. Wait until we have won a great victory 
and then let loose this thunderbolt." Mr. Lincoln then said, "Very 
well, gentlemen, I will wait," and like Siegfried in the play, who 
in the hollow of the mountain forged the sword with which he 
should do to death the dragon, Mr. Lincoln in quiet tempered 
that bolt with which he was at one blow to strike off the shackles 
of millions of souls. Well^ by and by came Wednesday and the 
Cabinet sat on Saturday, and the proclamation went forth on 
Sunday, and the sons of men throughout the world shouted as if 
they were the witnesses of a new creation, for there came to us 
a new heaven from which the dark cloud of judgment was rolled 
back, and a new earth that was printed with no foot of a slave; 
and the Americans could say for the first time that their land was 
not only the land of the brave, but the home of the free. 

Mr. Lincoln was a profoundly religious man, he subscribed to 
no particular "ism" ; he enrolled himself in no special church. It 
would have been to my thinking almost a false note for this 
unique and solitary character to have done so. In society he al- 
ways looked to manhood rather than to etiquette; in law he al- 
ways consulted common sense more than he did the statutes; in 
prestige and in religion he asked for a sincere heart more than 
for a mere creed. Mr. Lincoln refused to wear the strait-jacket 



ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 149 



of a bigot who says I am holier than thou, and he just as strenu- 
ously refused to wear the mantle of the fool who says in his heart, 
or he will say it with his lips if you make it a sufficient financial 
inducement for him to do so, he will say there is no God. But 
from the very moment that he took the cars at Springfield and 
tracked through the snow fields of that late springtime and 
asked his neighbors and his whole people to pray to God for him, 
until the hour when his great spirit went back to the Giver of it, 
he follov/ed the teachings of God as though he saw that pillar 
of cloud and of fire at all times. 

There was a delegation that v/ent to Mr. Lincoln at one time 
in a dark day of our story, and they wanted him to abandon the 
conflict ; they wanted him to give up his unequal warfare, as they 
called it, and restore peace to this unhappy land. His reply to 
them was, "Gentlemen, you remind me of an experience of my 
early life. I was working for a farmer, as a farm hand for old 
Deacon Jones. In the middle of the night I heard him call to 
me 'Abraham, Abraham, get up, the world is coming to an end.' " 
Says he, "I looked out of the window in my little attic room in the 
old log cabin, and I saw the stars raining from their places in the 
heavens, and my heart gave way within me, and I trembled with 
fear, feeling that the judgment hour had come. But, gentlemen, 
as I looked, I saw behind that blinding meteoric shower the old 
North Star shining just v/here it always had been, and the Dipper 
which I knew was there in all its glory, and I came to the con- 
clusion that the world was not at an end, and I would steer by 
the stars that God had set to remain in his heavens." 

Friends, we are at an another hour when opinions are divided. 
There are those that make the air to quiver with apprehension; 
there are those who tell us that we violate the Constitution and 
that we are false to the Declaration of Independence, but yet 



ISO THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

through the shower of meteors, through the roar of all the disturb- 
ances of this time, we will still behold the star of American inde- 
pendence, the star that shines for the right of liberty, the right 
of political liberty and religious liberty; that star is still fixed and 
immovable in God's heavens. By that we steer, by the light of it 
our fathers saw over the sea to lay the course of the Mayflower, 
until its prow had touched on Plymauth Rock. By that star 
Washington laid his course from Bunker Hill until it led to victory 
and Yorktown. By that star our martyred President guided his 
course from Sumter to Richmond. And that star is now sending its 
beams into the waters of a f ar-oflf sea, it has risen upon the horizon 
of the Orient, it is hanging like a beacon above those distant 
islands, and its shining will tell the world that a new day, a day 
of liberty for man, has arisen upon the face of the earth. 



THE FOURTEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1900 



Address of 
HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 



HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 

Congressman Cousins was born in Cedar Co., Iowa, 
in 1859. He graduated from Cornell College, Iowa, 1881. 
He was admitted to the bar in 1882 and has since been 
in active practice. Since 1893 he has represented the 
Fifth Iowa District and has won prominence as a con- 
gressional orator. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 



In every part and in almost every city of America, on this last 
anniversary in the century which produced him, a grateful peo- 
ple meet to pay their homage to the memory of Abraham Lin- 
coln. Not that it is possible for human speech to add to his re- 
nown, but rather that we may dedicate ourselves and the nation 
which he loved to a better understanding of his character and 
to the principles for which he lived and died. 

The nineteenth century brings to the threshold of the twen- 
tieth, perhaps the greatest and most distinguished names ever 
given to the list of the immortals by any single century of human 
progress, and chief of all those names is Lincoln. 

Somebody said that the history of a nation is the history of 
its great men. If our century has produced greater, better, 
nobler men who have achieved more for the human race than 
any other century, it indicates, if it does not prove, the progress 
of our world. It is a great thing to feel that this is true. 

The dream of the eighteenth century was free government — 
democracy — the thought that civilized and enlightened mankind 
could govern themselves, and that security, progress and endurance 
would attend that system. But it was doubted by the world even 
when our independence was achieved, doubted when Abraham Lin- 
coln was bom, doubted when a free people chose him as Presi- 
dent. The test of rebellion had not yet been made. When it 



154 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

finally came, most of the Old World's intellects volunteered the 
force and influence of their opinions against the possibility of the 
unity and survival of the republic. Even Mr. Gladstone expressed 
a disbelief in the possible restoration of the Union. But it should 
always be remembered in justice to that empire of the snows, ruled 
by the Imperial Czar, that when the supreme test of Republican 
government and human liberty was being made, no voice of dis- 
couragement ever emanated from the Russian Empire. 

The problem of human slavery — whether one human being could 
rightfully be claimed as the property of another, was the con- 
tention on which the tremendous test of Republican government 
arose. Being a question of both property and morals, all the 
prejudices and all the selfishness of human nature were neces- 
sarily aroused. Destiny had not seen fit to give the new republic 
the simple problem of solving the question of its unity, identity, 
and federal authority by a mere abstract interpretation of the 
Constitution upon the direct issue as to whether, for any cause, 
the Union might be dismembered. It seemed as though Infinite 
Wisdom sought to couple with the problem every passion that 
could come from human avarice, every prejudice that might arise 
from forfeiture, every bias that material considerations could 
arouse. The terrible test must be made for all time and with 
every aggravation that could possibly attend it. To reach the 
summit of free government and to there proclaim to all the world 
and for all time the unity and independence of the American re- 
public, the pilgrim of human progress must bear the heaviest pack 
that all the hands of prejudice and politics and doubt could pile 
upon his back. 

But it must be remembered that in our world of strife and toil 
and suffering and glory, nothing which is easy can be great. 

In the rumbling thunder of that approaching storm could be 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 155 

heard summons only for the bravest and the mightiest men. It 
was no place for pigmies. In the lightning's flash of the awful 
hour, human intellect, stimulated to intensity, must foresee the 
way by which the dearest hope of all the centuries could march 
to certain and enduring victory, and carry its cause into the per- 
manence of the ages. Ah, America, how great shall be the grati- 
tude to him who, standing in the flashlight of that crisis, shall 
discern with certainty the way for the new republic to work out 
its ultimate salvation — the way for liberty to live — the course by 
which a nation torn asunder shall reach a perfect and enduring 
Union ! 

Fifty years have passed and gone — half a century since all men 
learned his name — and now we come again as citizens of that 
permanent and perfect Union, to voice our gratitude to him who 
studied out the way, to him who said, "We shall nobly save, or 
meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth," 

He came into the contest as a countryman, out of the loins of 
labor and from the very heart of the continent. No trumpet 
sounded his arrival. No family of pedigree gave him prestige. 
He had to reason his way out of the woods into the world, out of 
poverty into position, out of politics into statesmanship, out of 
greatness into glory, and finally he went from life into the cal- 
endar of saints which never happens except by the unanimous 
consent of all mankind. 

America first knew him when he finished with Stephen A. Doug- 
las. The torch of his intellect, shining above all others, attracted 
attention. He had driven Douglas to evade the tenet of his party, 
that slavery was a creature of the Constitution, illimitable and 
uncontrollable, and made him say: "The people of a territory can, 
by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the 
formation of a State constitution." 



156 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

This declaration of Mr. Douglas was made in answer to Mr. 
Lincoln's famous second interrogatory in joint debate, and it 
ruined Douglas with the extreme Democrats. It was heterodox 
for one undertaking to speak for the Democracy and for slavery 
to admit that slavery could be anywhere or in any way impeded. 
The question was propounded by Mr. Lincoln against the advice 
of all his political counsellors. They feared it would give Mr. 
Douglas a chance to say what he did say, and thereby strengthen 
him with the conservative Kepublicans of Illinois. But by being 
careful, in Illinois^ he became an outlaw in Mississippi. Mr. Lin- 
coln foresaw this. He was looking to the future and to a wider 
horizon than that of a single State. Some people thought that his 
heart was set on the Senatorship of Illinois, but he was talkingi 
for the ages. He was running for a seat in that exalted place 
at the right hand of Infinite Justice. He was getting rid of Mr. 
Douglas so that the extreme Democrats in the coming presidential 
campaign would nominate a candidate as extreme and as bad as 
they were themselves. He was driving the friends of human 
slavery to their logical position, and he was demonstrating to the 
world the wickedness of that position. He was serving the con- 
servative men, the reasoning men of both parties, for the final con- 
flict that was coming on the wings of war. This was fine work. 
Its diplomacy was worthy of a Talleyrand; its reasoning worthy 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

When he had done with Douglas he was wanted everywhere. 
His reason had set a torch upon the hilltops. The close of the 
senatorial contest in Illinois was but the beginning of that larger 
contest which involved all States and all the future. The people 
of the country who had been confused by constitutional niceties 
were everywhere repeating over and over again the wondrous 
words : 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 157 



"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this 
country cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I 
do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the 
house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
become all one thing or the other. Either the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the 
public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ul- 
timate extinction or its advocates will push it farther until it be- 
comes alike lawful in all States, old as well as new, North as 
well as South." 

Perhaps never were words spoken by man which made such deep 
impression on the public mind. It was a prophecy carrying con- 
viction with its very utterance, and everywhere men wondered and 
inquired among themselves "what manner of man is this?" Ohio 
must have him in the campaign, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hamp- 
shire and Minnesota — every place in which the light of his un- 
rivaled wisdom had proceeded, called for him, and as Lord Lytton 
said about his famous Doctor Lloyd, finally, "Abbey Hill let him 
feel its pulse." He was invited to New York. He came to Cooper 
Institute, and in the presence of such men as William Cullen 
Bryant, David Dudley Field, and Horace Greeley, he who has 
been mentioned as the "rude lank Westerner," spoke to an audi- 
ence described by the Morning Tribune as an "assemblage of the 
intellect and mental culture of our city." 

It was here that he described the friends of human slavery and 
their audacity as "sinners calling the righteous to repentance." 
It was here that his genius gave him national renown and his 
logic unfolded the principles of the Constitution from its origin- 
ators and marked out the way of life for the republic. It was 
here that he made it possible to be President, and finally to be 
crucified. 



158 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

The dreaming child of the Kentucky woodland, the country 
boy of Indiana, the flat-boat pilot of the Mississippi, the village 
postmaster, lawyer, legislator and logician of Illinois, the orator 
and statesman of America, became our President. In the midst 
of the dissolving Union, standing before the Chief Justice who 
was to administer the oath of office, he had to say: "A disruption 
of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably 
attempted." And then came the sentence which voiced the senti- 
ment of loyalty in America for all time and showed the metal of 
this courageous and patriotic President: 

"I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Con- 
stitution, the union of these States is perpetual." 

Then finally came that matchless utterance of loyalty and love, 
that lifts the name of Lincoln into the loftiest place of literature : 
/ "I em loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We 
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must 
not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory 
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every lov- 
ing heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will swell the 
chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature." 

There have been men who ruled in this world by force and arbi- 
trary mandates and history calls them great. But in a republic, 
ruling power is granted only by the individual judgment and ap- 
proval of the millions which can only be reached by reason. When 
Abraham Lincoln had finished his first inaugural and taken the 
oath of office, he had convinced the better judgment of America 
not only of the justice of the Union's cause, but of his pre-eminent 
worthiness to represent that cause. His thought had reached the 
hearthstone, his argument was on the lips of countrymen; his 
love had touched the hearts of loyalty; his gentle spirit permeated 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 159 

every fireside; his matchless genius took possession of superior 
minds; his wondrous reasoning reached, like penetrating light, 
the intellects of all the lands and consequently at his beck and 
bidding stood the grandest army ever organized upon this earth 
from civil life — The Grand Army of the Union. 

Confronting it, there was the greatest force "ever forged into 
a thunderbolt of rebellion" against any nation. The conflict that 
ensued was awful and unequaled in the annals of our world. The 
memories of broken hopes, of blighted love, of scattered families re- 
main forever as the shadows and the lines of care upon the sad 
and love-illumined face of the immortal Lincoln. Every sorrow 
touched his tender heart and every sacrifice that heroism gave its 
country left a scar upon his sorrowful and homely features. But in 
all the trials of that tremendous war, his judgment proved un- 
erring and his never-failing reason was the guiding light. His 
was the master mind, not only in the matters of momentous pol- 
icy and statecraft, but wisely practical in all the details of de- 
partmental difficulties. Not only was he the most unerring judge 
of men, but wondrous in his judgment of maneuvering and in 
foreseeing and in planning for emergencies. He was perhaps the 
first promotor of the Ironclad. When he learned that one of the 
Confederate batteries at Charleston Harbor had been made to resist 
the heaviest shot by being covered with bars of railroad iron, he 
asked Mr. Fox, his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, what difficulty 
there was in the way of using such a defense upon a vessel. He 
was told that naval officers feared that "an armor heavy enough 
to make them effective would sink them as soon as launched." 
*'But is not that a sum in arithmetic?" inquired the President. 
"On our Western rivers we can figure just how many tons will 
sink a flat-boat. Can't you clerks do the same for an armored 
vessel?" From the idea of that conversation undoubtedly the 



i6o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

Monitor was built ! The President was the friend of Ericsson and 
Captain Worden. Two days before the famous battle of the Moni- 
tor and Merrimac he said, "I believe in the Monitor and her com- 
mander. If Captain Worden does not give a good account of him- 
self I shall have made a mistake in following my judgment. I 
have not made a mistake in following my clear judgment of men 
since the war began. I followed that judgment when I gave 
Worden the command of the Monitor. The Monitor should be in 
Hampton Roads now, she left New York eight days ago." When 
he was told by Captain Fox that it was not prudent to place any 
reliance in the Monitor, he replied: 

"I respect your judgment as you have good reason to know, 
but this time you are all wrong. The Monitor was one of my in- 
spirations; I believed in her firmly when that energetic con- 
tractor first showed me Ericsson's plans. Captain Ericsson's plain 
but rather enthusiastic demonstration made my conversion per- 
manent. It was called a floating battery then; I called it a raft. 
I thought then and I am confident now, it is just what we 
want. I am sure the Monitor is still afloat and that she will yet 
give a good account of herself. Sometimes I think she may be the 
veritable sling with a stone that shall yet smite the Merrimac 
Philistine in the forehead." 

On the second night after that utterance, anxiously waiting 
with oflicers of the Navy, he heard the joyful news of the victory 
from Hampton Roads. The idea which was developed by Erics- 
son had become the monarch of the seas and revolutionized the 
navies of the world. 

There seems to be a kind of aiflnity in great minds for the sea 
and for sea-craft. No nation has ever become great in the world 
of nations that has not taken its place fearlessly and permanently 
as a co-tenant of the ocean. The sea is treacherous to ignorance, 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS i6i 



to enlightenment it is kind. Queen Elizabeth used to say, "Quid 
mihi Maris scribet?" "What does the sea say to me?" On that 
memorable Sunday night, March 9, 1862, the sea said to Abraham 
Lincoln, "Henceforth we shall be friends. The child of your 
mind has become the master of the mighty deep." A little while 
ago the sea said to President McKinley, "Come this way." And 
in the gray dawn of the morning Admiral Dewey carried the stars 
and stiipes, the emblem of civilization, by the cannon of Cavite, 
saying to Gridley, "You can fire when you are ready," and when 
the smoke had cleared away, the world beheld the banner of the 
stars triumphant in Manila Bay. It said to Sampson and to 
Schley, to Clark and to Wainwright, to Fighting Bob and Praying 
Philip, "Catch Cervera and I'll give your country rich posses- 
sions near to Nevis of the Lesser Antilles, the birthplace of Alex- 
ander Hamilton," and in less than two hours the sea gulls looked 
in vain for a Spanish flag ! Such are the exploits of the Ironclad, 
the child of Abraham Lincoln's genius. 

Being himself great, he was a judge of greatness. He recog- 
nized ability when he saw it. Therefore the greatest military 
genius of the century did not escape his keen, observing eye. He 
watched the movement of the Western army. He saw the triumphs 
at Belmont, Donelson and Shiloh. He saw the army of the Ten- 
nessee with the hope of all the centuries, trying to find a way to 
cross the river with no place to embark and no place to land; he 
saw the final triumph at Vicksburg, and with the millions of 
America he called for General Grant to take command of all the 
Union forces. He listened to some small general enviously say, 
"Grant drinks," and then he calmly and ironically said, "What 
does he drink? I want to send some of the same brand to all 
my generals." Henceforth Grant was unmolested, and within two 
years from the time America really knew she had a Grant, the 



i62 THE REPUBLI'lAN CLUB 

banner of the stars was shining on the Continent, the stars and 
stripes were floating over Richmond. 

/Abraham Lincoln saw the final triumph. He witnessed the 
j 'fulfilment of his mission. He carried out his proclamation of 
r universal liberty. His wisdom bound together the matchless army 
/ of the Union which made forever good the declaration of his first 
inaugural, "The union of these States is perpetual." He went 
to Gettysburg, and with his living heart upon the hearts of com- 
rades dead, his lips pronounced those words of love and eloquence 
\ that live forever as the matchless gem of concentrated speech in 
^-.-jdL-OttxJitejra^tureJ With stockinged feet before the White House 
gpate, he watched the flickering fire on many an anxious night, 
/just as he had done in old Kentucky and in Indiana and in Illi- 
/ nois in youthtime and in early manhood, and in fancy saw fan- 
/ tastic figures, sometimes droll, amusing him in lonely hours, and 
then sometimes he saw ambition in its selfish form and hated it. 
/ He saw the widowed mother and her hungry child; he saw the 
lover dying on the battlefield for country's sake and then he saw 
; the face of his betrothed in agony at home. He saw the charge 

\ of cavalry and heard the crash of death; he saw the steady lines 

of infantry starting for the cannoned crest and felt the shot and 
\ shell that mangled human forms. And there in the last, long, 

\ flickering light, he saw the emblem of the union carried to the 

\ eternal heights. ] With sad but hopeful heart he laid his head 
upon the pillow in the mansion where Washington had slept; at 
early morn he awoke from troubled sleep from day to day until 
'twas done, the mission of a mighty soul. 
[ Bone of the bone, and sinew of the sinew, heart of the very 
\ heart of the American nation, incarnation of its spirit, he rea- 
\\soned out his course in the darkest epoch of its troubled, glorious 
listory. 



/ 



1iis1 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 163 

The most assuring fact which the twentieth century takes from 
the last lesson of the nineteenth is this : In the greatest revolution 
ever known upon this earth — the struggle for the unity and the 
survival of free government — the guiding spirit of the Union's 
cause and the greatest general who bore his shield was born and 
bred and reared in the average environment and among the middle 
classes of the commonwealth, where the illustrious examples and 
their wholesome patriotic precepts are learned, revered and prac- 
tised by the great majority of the successive generations who con- 
stitute American citizenship. 

Abraham Lincoln was chosen President by the better judgment 
of the populace which his reason had convinced before the actual 
strife began. Called again by the unanimous voice of loyalty, 
when the contest had practically ended, he sat securely in the seat 
of triumph and of glory, when the greatest tragedy of fact or 
fiction in the annals of our tragic world took him from the vision 
of mankind before their grateful hearts could hear his final bless- 
ing and his benediction. 

I think it was Theophile Gautier who conceived in his imagina- 
tion a magician who could exchange the souls of men. If by some 
magic power the soul of J. Wilkes Booth could have been placed 
in the breast of the martyred President, after the fatal shot was 
fired, so that it could have gone to the judgment seat with the 
face of Abraham Lincoln, it might have passed the pearly gates un- 
challenged. And if the spirit of the murdered President could 
have entered the breast of that most depraved of all assassins, the 
murderous hand might momentarily have been forgiven the great- 
est crime in history, just for the sake of keeping in our sad and 
grateful world, even for a little while, the loftiest soul, the sweet- 
est spirit, it has ever known in mortal man. 



THE FIFTEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1901 



Address of 
HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 



HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 

Mr. Baldwin was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 
1858, and practised law there until in later life he was 
made General Attorney of the Union Pacific Railroad. 
He removed to Omaha, Nebraska, where he died in 1908. 
A volume of his speeches has been published in that 
city. His reputation as a lawyer and orator extended 
throughout the entire West. 



i 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: From the prairies of the North- 
western States, recently swept by the breezes of the Republican 
victory, I salute you! 

The work of holding some States steadfast, returning to the fold 
those that had been lost, and making and keeping all Republican, 
was accomplished by following the precepts and principles of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

Upon an occasion when Republicans have assembled to com- 
memorate Lincoln's birth, life and services, the tillers of the soil 
extend the hand of Republican fellowship to the master of the 
mart and bid me greet you! I come as a humble but earnest Re- 
publican of the rank and file, feelingly alive to the supremacy of 
Lincolnian principles, to speak briefly of the virtues which guided 
Lincoln's private and public life, founded the Republican party, 
and which must be followed in the solution of future problems 
and the creation of future policies if that party is to long con- 
tinue. 

Abraham Lincoln stands in no need of a vindicator or a eulogist. 
"His life speaks its own best eulogy." There need be no fear that 
if these commemorations should cease, Lincoln would sink in pub- 
lic estimation or his deeds be lost in history. He had received the 
heart homage of the world before the beauties of his character 
were pointed out by the critical wand of the orator or the subtler 



i68 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

insight of the poet. Not, however, until poets cease to sing of 
love, duty, justice, simplicity, sincerity and truth, will men cease 
to talk about Lincoln. 

The hero-worshipper notes carefully the birthtime, place and 
childhood environment of his idol. We are all familiar with 
the stressful action through which Lincoln's character was de- 
veloped and the strange frontier country in which his imagina- 
tion was unfolded. I believe the cardinal virtues of this life, 
that have challenged the world's attention, were simplicity, sin- 
cerity and truth, and I also believe that the Providence of God 
ordered and set the scenes of Lincoln's early pilgrimage through 
life to create, form and fashion these virtues. A family of four, 
a log cabin, no window, one room and a door. No furniture but 
rude logs. No machinery, but an axe. No light but the flames 
from burning brush. No steam, but muscle to rive the rail. 
No college, but Bible lore, fairy tales and country legends. No 
art, but the field and forests. No music but the song of the lark. 
No painting but the sun dipping his golden plumage in the West. 
It was under these and similar conditions that Abraham Lincoln 
was born, his character framed, his imagination formed, and his 
noble and heroic soul entered on life. 

Not by birth or opportunity was this man made. 

In the strange twilight of the prairies, unheralded and un- 
known, this grandly simple life began, and yet the whole world 
has heard the story from his studies by the log-light to the speech 
at Gettysburg. 

In the solitude of the forest, in close communion with nature 
and nature's God, in the rude, humble toil of the frontiersman, was 
developed the innate selfhood of the man, the power that touched 
with the glory of transfiguration that simple, earnest, sincere 
man, as he uttered the closing appeal of his first inaugural. 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 169 



To study in libraries, surrounded by works of art and within 
the hearing of man-made melodies, would have interfered with 
that necessary, fearless and constant endeavor after truth which 
made the hand of a rail-splitter pen the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion. 

We catch a glimpse of the effect of his communion with nature 
in giving tint or shape to his thoughts, and how vividly he shaped 
a simple truth, in his speech before the Republican state conven- 
tion of Illinois, in 1856. He said: 

*'In 1824 the free men of our State, led by Governor Coles, de- 
termined that these beautiful groves should never re-echo the 
dirge of one who has no title to himself. By their resolute de- 
termination the winds that sweep across our broad prairies shall 
never cool the parched brow, nor shall the unfettered streams that 
bring joy and gladness to our free soil water the tired feet of a 
slave; but so long as those heavenly breezes and sparkling streams 
bless the land, or the groves and their fragrance or their memory 
remain, the humanity to which they minister shall be forever 
free." 

Simplicity, sincerity and truth — each element necessary to the 
existence of the other — so early and deeply imbedded in his strong 
and simple nature, always continued to be Lincoln's noblest char- 
acteristics. This great triumvirate of power and virtue kept step 
with his advance, ruled him well, made him the founder of a great 
party, the deliverer of a nation, and the preserver of a Consti- 
tution. 

Abraham Lincoln would have the truth, and the truth which 
he felt to be true. 

Truth, that only one of which there are no degrees, but breaks 
and rents continually; that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pil- 
lar; that golden and narrow line, which the very powers and vir- 



170 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

tues that lean upon it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, 
which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows 
with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity 
dims with her tears. There are some faults, slight in the sight 
of love; some errors, slight in the estimate of wisdom, but truth 
forgives no insult and endures no stain. 

I venture the suggestion that no man will ever write his his- 
tory and entitle it "The True Abraham Lincoln." 

Abraham Lincoln ! His simplicity and directness in thought, ut- 
terance and writing! He began his studies with a wooden shovel 
for a slate, logs and boards for paper. He died the greatest mas- 
ter of prose ever produced by the English race. 

His sincerity! Enslaved by poverty and deprivation, his youngs 
darkly struggling heart longed for freedom. He died the eman- 
cipator of a race. His truth! It can be said of him, that which 
cannot be said of any other uninspired man, that some there are 
who doubt God, but no one the God-likeness of Lincoln. 

It is not that Lincoln needs us, but that we need him, that we 
are met. 

There are practical uses of great men, and when they depart 
they leave their character and services as public property. The 
deeds of Abraham Lincoln will live forever. It remains with us 
and succeeding generations to determine whether his counsel shall 
prevail, for "the most valuable truths, though known, are use- 
less if not applied." 

If certain prophets and philosophers are to be believed, then if 
we were to detach any arc or segment from the total cycle of hu- 
man records we should find that it did not at its beginning promise 
or prefigure as much of good or evil, happiness or misery, liberty 
or thraldom, a millennial armistice or an seon of war, than the 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 171 



present course upon which the human race has just started to 
take its way. 

It is said : That this is no longer a government fashioned after 
the precepts and principles of Abraham Lincoln ; that the declara- 
tion that "all men are created equal" is unheeded; that capital 
and labor are opposed and uncommunicating ; that it is an age of 
mammon and machinery; that manufacturers are gorged with the 
largeness of a plundering tariff; that the existing financial sys- 
tem is ?, conspiracy against the human race; that imperialism and 
militarism are the spirit of the times, and that forts are con- 
veniently located so that a standing army can suppress by force 
discontent among laboring people. 

If these conditions do really exist, they put the state in dan- 
ger, and, if not amended, will destroy it. 

If these conditions do not really exist, but by certain peculiar 
practices, prophecies and platforms are made so to appear to six 
millions of voters, we have a social anomaly which also bodes 
peril to the state. 

Let us not deceive ourselves. There are social anomalies and 
phenomena that portend trouble to the republic, and the party of 
Abraham Lincoln is morally pledged to an honest investigation 
as to the cause and the remedy. Recent records show that a party 
in its efforts to investigate and solve these questions and difficul- 
ties, summoned the expert, rather than the eyewitness; consulted 
with prognosticators rather than the practical; gathered men in 
swarms, and under the influence of its magnetic leader so charmed 
them that they were ready to receive "the stupidest absurdities as 
axioms of Euclid" ; a party whose leader appealed to the sublimest 
declaration of independence and equality one moment^ and the 
next to the passions and prejudices of his auditors; fulminated 
against certain governmental policies and yet swore before the 



172 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

assessor that under four years of the administration of these self- 
same policies, his estate was increased sixteen to one and a frac- 
tion over; declared one day that he "did not believe in weighing 
the dollar against human life and liberty," and the next, weighing 
his words, shouted, "Great is Tammany, and Croker is its prophet." 
And yet the same records show that these schemes, dreams, falsi- 
ties, abstractions and practices, destitute of everything but pro- 
portion in their presentment, received the support and approval 
of nearly one-half of the voters of this country. 

That such a party with such a leader and with just such sim- 
plicity enough to confuse, just sincerity enough to pretend, and 
just truth enough to deceive, could thus be sanctioned by so large 
a proportion of the American people, almost passes belief. 

The lustre of Lincoln's name is our inheritance and if we ex- 
pect a continuance of the happy consequence of his labors we must 
drink deep of the spring of his precepts, draw from the copious 
resources of his wisdom and move up into the radiations of his 
spirit. Happy for this people, happy for this nation, that "it is 
a provision in the moral government of the world, to hold out 
constantly to mankind both the example of virtue for imitation 
and its precepts for obedience, and the moral constitution of man 
is never so depraved as to be totally insensible to either." 

It should be noted here that Lincoln's life was devoted to the 
question of slavery and its cognate questions. The paramount 
issue then was the maintenance of the government itself — internal 
regulations were of secondary importance. The great, portentous 
and momentous questions of finance, tariff, capital and labor, and 
the policy of acquiring and holding territory without our borders 
were not present during Lincoln's life, at least in their present 
proportion. If the proper study of his life has taught us anything, 
it is that in the solution of these questions Lincoln would have 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 173 

brought to bear the same methods and principles which guided 
him in the solution of the great problems he so grandly and so 
successfully met and solved. 

Let us not be discouraged. Only search unweariedly for the truth. 
We must not assume that the power of wealth is the cause of the 
discontent of the poor, but must investigate. The right distribu- 
tion of wealth cannot be fixed by "swarmery." We need a simpler 
and finer contrivance. In making laws for the protection of the 
poor and the incompetent, we must not bring about the death of 
ambition, for ambition is the spring of enterprise, and enterprise 
the leading spirit of progress. Opportunity must be given to 
great ability to wield the power of great wealth. There must 
be protection for the strong as well as the weak, otherwise the 
arm of enterprise is paralyzed and the power of progress is in abey- 
ance. A law which has not justice for the last dollar of the 
millionaire will have no protection for the orphan's invested pence 
or the laborer's savings. The best laws are those which in their 
administration will "leave capital to find its most lucrative course, 
commodities their fairest price, industry and intelligence their 
natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, main- 
taining peace by defending property, by diminishing the price of 
law and by observing strict economy in every department of the 
state." 

The poor, the discontented and the distressed, can safely leave 
their cause in the hands of those who will endeavor, at least, to 
determine it according to the principles of Abraham Lincoln — he 
who worked unselfishly for selfish men, "in whose large heart with 
its large bounty, wretchedness found a solacement, and they that 
were wandering in darkness the light as of a home," he who stands 
in crowned sovereignty the simplest, gentlest and noblest of 
men. 



y 



174 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

The birth of George Washington was the sign of American 
freedom; the death of Abraham Lincoln was its consummation. 
When Washington died part only was free; when Lincoln died 
there was no slave. 

The same spirit of civil liberty that animated Washington in 
his struggle to make this land free, and Lincoln to make every 
man free, is to-day moving over the waters of our governmental 
life. It recognizes no limitations and has no frontiers. It will 
move as easily and as surely over an ocean as it has over state, 
treaty and boundary lines. 

It may not be in your day or mine; but, as the spirit of Chris- 
tianity will some day encompass this earth, so will the spirit of 
civil liberty enter into the formation of all governments and 
control all nations. 

In the work of libertyizing this world the American flag will 
always be seen in the lead. On whatever land the Stars and 
Stripes are raised it will be for Freedom; whenever lowered it 
will be for honor; and wherever unfurled it will be forever and 
forever. 

Along with the utterances of Abraham Lincoln I place that of 
our President, fighting for peace, aye, a peace-loving ruler in a 
warring world. 

"Peace first; then with charity for all, establish a government 
of law, protecting life and property, and occupation for the well- 
being of all the people who will participate in it under the Stars 
and Stripes. 

"If these counsels or this work be of men, it will be overthrown, 
but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow it." 

We do not know, but we believe, that Lincoln's wondrous work 
was done under a higher guidance than ours; and it will not be 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 175 

overthrown, because it is of the counsel of the same power which 
ballasts the constellations while penciling the pink. 

We do not know, but we believe, that in his last hour, when 
"all the faculty of the broken spirit had faded away into in- 
anity — imagination, thought^ effort, enjoyment — then, at last, the 
night flower of belief alone continued to bloom, and refreshed 
with its perfume his last darkness." 

We do not know, but we believe, that when death's cold kiss 
made him dreamless here for evermore, instantly he felt the 
warm touch of the Infinite and became immortal! 



THE SIXTEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1902 



Address of 
HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 



JAMES WILLIS GLEED, A.M., LL.D. 



Mr, Gleed was born in Morrisville, Vt., in 1859. He 
graduated from the State University of Kansas, 1879, 
and the Columbia Law School, 1884. Since 1884 he 
has been in the active practice of law. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 



Forty years have passed since the inauguration of Abraham Lin- 
coln. His great secretaries and military commanders, his lieu- 
tenants in Congress, his staunch allies, the war governors of the 
States, the great intellectual, financial and political leaders of 
that far-off time, his friends and his enemies, both North and 
South, who could properly be called his contemporaries, are all, 
or nearly all, at rest. Even the youngest of the boys who fought 
for and against him begin to be warned by the dimmed eye, the 
heavy ear, or the faltering step, that the time draweth nigh. 

The President of to-day was in his cradle forty years ago. A 
new generation has come, to whom the stress and storm and pas- 
sions of the great Rebellion are but as a story that is told; and 
even to the oldest of my hearers the fife, the drum, the tread of 
marching feet, the clash of arms and the roar of cannon are an 
echo and a memory growing ever dimmer and more distant. 

During these forty years a thousand books have been written 
and published about Abraham Lincoln, and ten thousand essays 
and addresses. His career has been described and his character 
has been analyzed; he has been placed and sung and glorified till 
history and philosophy and eloquence and poetry are exhausted 
and no new thing remains to be said. 

But while, as each new anniversary arrives, we can only say 
the old things, it is fitting and proper that the old things should 



i8o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

be said; and it is certain that they will be said every year more 
simply and reverently and sincerely. We cannot praise him; we 
cannot glorify him. We cannot even describe him, no words are 
simple and majestic enough but his own. I can think of no com- 
memoration on an occasion like this quite fitting and adequate, ex- 
cept the Gettysburg address, the second inaugural, and a few mo- 
ments of silent thankfulness to Almighty God for Abraham Lin- 
coln. 

And yet we must remember that such deep feelings of reverence 
and gratitude are not native to the human heart — they do not 
come spontaneously to each new generation — but are born of study 
and reflection and, therefore, it is necessary that new books should 
be written and new addresses be made and that the old things 
should be said and said again. 

In the few minutes allotted to me to-night I suppose it is not 
very important or material what special features of his career or 
his character or his teachings I endeavor to recall. 

Mr. Lincoln in a marvelous way embodies the history and char- 
acter of the American people. The tragedy of his life, like the 
tragedy of the nation's life, takes root a long way back. It was 
in Virginia that the first African slaves were landed. It was a 
Virginian, Colonel Mason, who said, in the Federal convention: 
"Slavery brings the judgment of Heaven upon a country. As 
nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they 
must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects 
Providence punishes national sins by national calamities." It 
was another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, who later said of 
slavery : "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God 
is just; and that his justice cannot sleep forever." When the 
national punishment came, it was Virginia that suffered most. 
In Virginia the great tragedy came to an end ; it was in Virginia 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED i8i 

that the father and mother of Abraham Lincoln were born. Thu3 
the tree of healing springs from the Old Domain where the na- 
tional disease was first planted. 

It is, perhaps, due to slavery that his father and mother can 
neither read nor write ; that he is shiftless, inefficient and nomadic. 
It is, perhaps, due to slavery that we see the future President born 
as in a manger, amid surroundings most barren, hopeless and de- 
pressing. No angel of the Lord warns the shepherds of his ad- 
vent. No star comes and stands over where the young child lies. 
No Wise Men of the East visit his cradle. And had vision warned 
and star directed and were the Wise Men here, they could not wor- 
ship; they could not believe that this rude log cabin, without 
window or door, on this barren farm in Hardin County, Kentucky, 
holds the savior of a nation. To the Wise Men of the East no 
place more unlikely to cradle a great statesman than the rude 
hovel of this vagrant "poor white"; just as to the Wise Men of 
the West no place more unlikely to cradle a great, rugged, hu- 
mane man of the people than a mansion of a merchant prince here 
in New York. Fortunately under our form of government neither 
Hardin County, Kentucky, nor New York City is barred. For- 
tunately under our form of government the merchant prince as 
well as the wandering pioneer may be father to a president. For- 
tunately under our Constitution we can avail ourselves of wisdom 
and of worth wheresoever they spring. 

Regarding Mr. Lincoln the important thing is, of course, to com- 
prehend what he became, what he did and what he taught; and 
yet we love to dwell on the becoming — the early processes — and 
to go over the dramatic outward incidents of his life. 

We follow him from Kentucky into Indiana. We see him at 
school there, in the open woods all day and by the firelight after 
the day's work is done. We take interest in his college days; we 



i82 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

see him at his athletics in that wide, leafy, whispering gymnasium 
of his — axe in hand — building him a body of iron; and we see 
him in his library with the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress and 
Shakespeare and the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
stitution of the United States; and somehow we know that these 
professors of his, Moses and David, and Isaiah, and Bunyan, and 
Shakespeare, and Washington, and Jefferson, and the Great World 
of Nature and the Human Struggle and Suffering, are never in 
the future to be anywise ashamed of their handiwork. 

In 1830 we see him moving his family, with their scant and 
meagre chattels, westward to Illinois; we see him on his southern 
journey floating slowly down to his first shuddering contact 
with human slavery — that thing which he said "had and con- 
tinually exercised the power of making him miserable." We see 
him hunting his place in the world of work; he is a farm laborer, 
a flat-boatman, a clerk, a small merchant. He meditates becoming 
a blacksmith. He is a captain in the Black Hawk War. He be- 
comes a surveyor and a postmaster, and flnally devotes himself to 
the study and practice of the law. 

We see him lifted and ennobled by the joy and the pain of a 
great and tender love. How pathetic the story of Ann Rutledge ! 
He stands by her dying bed ; he follows her to the grave ; darkness 
overwhelms him; he sits at night with a friend, unnerved, trem- 
bling, tears trickling through his fingers, racked with the thought 
of the snow and the rain upon the grave ; for months he is on the 
verge of insanity; and the shadow is on his face and the melan- 
choly is in his eyes that are to remain there and grow deeper to 
the end. 

Always after this we feel the man to be above and outside the 
things he is doing, and apart from them. He does not seem 
ambitious. He does not seem to struggle. He seems to move pa- 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 183 

tiently forward, faithfully performing the tasks as they come. He 
serves in the Legislature; he practises law; he is elected one term 
to Congress; he finds it disappointing; he applies for the General 
Land Ofiice; and is refused; he goes back to the practice of his 
profession, giving up politics, as he thinks, for all time. 

And now, after a considerable interval of quiet professional life, 
comes an ominous and fateful year. The period of mutual re- 
straint. North and South, is at an end; slavery must be extended 
and live, or it must be restricted and die ; the Missouri Compromise 
is repealed and the great battle is begun. 

Fifty-four marks the beginning of the last decade of Lincoln's 
life. It marks the beginning of his ministry. Now we are to 
find what manner of man he has become and what place he is 
to hold in the history of the nation and of the world. 

Biography should be read backward — first find what at ma- 
turity a man was and did — all else is incidental — and Mr. Lin- 
coln's should begin here. From this on, he stands always in the 
white light. From this on, we can see ourselves the great, patient 
purpose driving, the great intellect executing, the great heart suf- 
fering. From this on, we need take no man's word for him; we 
may study Lincoln direct; we have an authentic record — twelve 
hundred printed pages of his own words — his letters, speeches, 
messages and proclamations. 

And what a marvelous record it is. Let any young American 
of this or future generations, who seeks the true image, the un- 
broken melody, take up this record first — and last. And if he 
shall come to the task a little skeptical; if his observation in a 
peaceful and progressive age shall have taught him that things 
are not always what they seem, that high power and high char- 
acter are not always found in high places, that reputations are 
sometimes manufactured; that public opinion is often wrong; if 



i84 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

he shall come to the task in a spirit tinged with cynicism; with 
a vague impression or suspicion that Lincoln's place in history 
and his hold on human hearts was won by a mere shrewd, good- 
natured, story-telling politician; that his nomination v/as in part 
an accident and in part a compromise ; that some or many of his do- 
ings and sayings will have to be apologized for; that he was a 
man who drifted with the current and who happened to be at the 
head of affairs during a highly critical period ; that under pressure 
he developed good capacities, but that he was so placed as to reap 
the glory of other people's achievements; that the manner of his 
death, and the time of it, set a halo and mystic glory around him 
which make just criticism and sound judgment impossible — if, I 
say, the young American of this or any future generation shall 
sit down to read that record with such prepossessions, or with 
any of them, he will rise up ashamed. He will rise up with the 
feeling that those twelve hundred pages, recording the thoughts, 
feelings, purposes, triumphs and sufferings of the last decade of 
Lincoln's life, make a book matchless since the Bible. It will be 
to him like a spiritual baptism — a new birth. And ever there- 
after, when he listens to the words of any man, however great, 
however eloquent, about Lincoln, he will feel that he has the meas- 
ure of the speaker or the writer, perhaps, but never the measure 
of Lincoln, He will feel ever more deeply that Lincoln, looked at 
through the eyes of any man however sympathetic, is simply Lin- 
coln diminished, Lincoln lessened; and he will turn back unsat- 
isfied to Lincoln's own printed pages and recorded words. 

Oh, the strength and the grandeur of that record! Oh, the 
beauty, the gentleness, the tenderness of it ! It seems to-day forty 
years after, fresh-wet with tears; the blood stains are not dry; 
the prayers still beat up to Heaven — or are but just now hushed ! 
The meanest of us rises from it awe-stricken, with bated breath, 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED X85 



humbled, comforted, inspired — with something of that heroic 
heart new-growing in his own; with something of those melan- 
choly eyes new-shadowed in his, with something of that dauntless 
courage and invincible purpose knitting itself into his innermost 
being. There shines the mind, there throbs the heart, there moves 
the divine, undeviating purpose ! Twelve hundred pages of words 
pressed out like drops of blood and sweat by a great civil strug- 
gle — burned out in the fiery furnace of war! No hatred, no scorn, 
no pride, no exultation, no selfishness, no weakness of any kind 
anywhere to be found! Every page with something to moisten 
the ey3, to stiffen the will, to exalt the aspirations, to illumine the 
intellect, to set the heart throbbing or the nerves tingling! On 
every page some sentence that flashes like a searchlight or rings 
like a rifle-shot. No other such record is to be found in all lit- 
erature. 

In 1860, just after the Republican national convention, Mr. 
Beecher said to Mr. Raymond of the Times, "Your candidate 
(Seward) would not do in a crisis like this; he has too much head, 
and too little heart." "And yours," said Raymond, "has, I fear, 
too much heart and too little head." 

Wendell Phillips, sincere to the core, refusing to misstate his 
real views even by the cofiin's side and under the pressure of uni- 
versal sorrow, said in '65: "No matter now that unable to lead 
and form the nation, he was content to be its mouthpiece and 
representative." 

Had Mr. Lincoln "too little head?" Was he "unable to lead 
and form?" What does the record show? 

Take, for a moment, the great debate with Douglas, which real- 
ly began in 1854 and lasted until 1860. What shall we expect 
of this debate? Mr. Lincoln has a great reputation for humor; 
he has been bom and has grown up and has always lived on the 



i86 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

border; he is supposed to be deficient in education; his audiences 
are supposed to be rude, rough, pioneer audiences. What shall 
we expect then of this debate ? Wit, anecdote, personalities, keen 
thrusts, excess of emotion and ornamentation, a tinge of coarse- 
ness, something of blare and breath and broadness; much to be 
apologized for and excused, yet all to be redeemed by a certain 
rugged strength and underlying sincerity — and occasional flashes 
of insight and foresight proving him a native, though untrained, 
undisciplined genius? 

Will the form and manner be crude and faulty, the matter 
bold, audacious and free even to lawlessness? We read and rub 
our eyes astonished. It is all so simple, so lucid, so logical, so 
chaste and unadorned, so tremendously earnest, and oh, so in- 
effably fair and candid and kind ! No laughter, no personalities, 
no play upon the emotions, no tricks of oratory; nothing but the 
light of reason and the steady fire of moral conviction. He does 
not dazzle, nor drive, nor overwhelm, but he wins, he melts, he 
persuades, he steals his very enemies away from their most cher- 
ished beliefs. We read the speeches of others and we say: "What 
an orator! How bold! How brilliant! What learning! What 
logic! What power!" We read this long debate and we say: 
"How was it possible to think or feel otherwise?" 

And as for lawlessness! It was Mr. Beecher, of Brooklyn, who 
wanted it graven on his tombstone that he "scorned and spit 
upon the fugitive slave law." Mr. Lincoln said: "Every pro- 
vision of the Constitution must be obeyed in good faith." It was 
Boston's voice that condemned that Constitution as a league with 
hell ; Mr. Lincoln maintained it was the Ark of the Covenant. 

How shall we mark the great mind, the real leader, in public 
affairs? Must he not be the man who most fully comprehends ex- 
isting conditions ; the man whose aims are highest, broadest, most 



i 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 187 



far-reaching, and most steadily maintained; the man who applies 
to existing conditions those measures best calculated to work the 
result desired? 

Measured thus, what shall be said of Mr. Lincoln? In 1854 he 
understood, better than any other man, the existing conditions, 
North and South. He comprehended the entire slavery question. 
He saw and pitied the bondage of the blacks. He saw and pitied 
the bondage of the whites. "He who would be no slave," said he, 
"must have no slave." Slavery was slavery to whites as well as 
to blacks. The institution was not only morally wrong — it was 
materially destructive and wasteful. It ate up, it wasted the 
power and virtue of the very soil. Its steady tendency was more 
land, more slaves — less product. It must be extended to live; 
confined to the old slave states it would destroy itself. He saw 
this. He saw, too, the bondage and the blindness of the people 
of the North — their servility, their cowardice, their moral leth- 
argy. He saw a part cringing, pliant, prostrate; a part ut- 
terly indifferent; almost all, in 1854, selfishly engrossed. 

Thus he understood the conditions of 1854. He understood 
something else. He understood the Constitution; he revered, he 
worshipped the Declaration of Independence. 

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thy- 
self." This Mr. Lincoln confessed as the substance of his religion, 
and this is the very pith and core and essence of his political faith 
and teaching. It was his religion, his morals, his politics and 
his statesmanship. "Thy neighbor as thyself," translated into 
government, meant to him, "All men are created free and equal." 

He believed in the Declaration of Independence. He believed 
that the sufferings, the life-and-death struggle of the Revolu- 
tionary fathers, lifted them for the time being to new heights of 



i88 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

spiritual vision; and that in the end they conquered not only the 
armies of King George, but they conquered themselves and Old 
World prejudices and inherited evils and errors. The Declaration 
was the source of all his political sentiments; he frequently said 
so. It is the text of all his political teaching and the motive of 
all his political measures. It runs like a strand of gold through 
the whole fabric of his life. It is the very background and 
atmosphere of the picture — the theme and melody of the whole 
majestic composition — "All men are created equal — all men are 
created equal." 

He believed in equality. In that attitude of mind under which 
society says to each new soul as it appears, not: "What have you?" 
— not, "What bring you?" "Whence come you?" — race, caste, 
class, color? — but simply, "What are you — what can you do?" 

Lincoln believed in equality. It was not a "self-evident lie," 
it was not a mere glittering generality; it was a great political 
and spiritual truth; it was a wide-sweeping, all-embracing, life- 
giving principle; the very sun of the true social and political 
system. 

He not only believed in the Declaration as a religion, but he 
understood it as a policy — he saw more and more clearly, as time 
went on, the extreme wisdom of it. He saw more and more as 
time went on, the spread of intelligence that lay in it, the growth 
of virtue that lay in it, the increase of wealth that lay in it, the 
perpetual harvest of patriotism, of manhood, of national strength 
and power, to spring from that simply stated truth if really under- 
stood and faithfully followed. 

And how has history justified his faith! It is a great argu- 
ment for this great doctrine of equality that it has made us rich; 
it is a greater argument that it gave us that splendid army of 
volunteers in '61 ; it is the greatest argument that when our exist- 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 189 

ence as a nation hung in the balance, when the Declaration itself 
was on trial for its life, this doctrine of equality gave to us, gave 
to that army and gave to humanity the life and services of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. 

Now one more factor in the problem. He appreciated the value 
of the Union. The Union was everything. The extreme Abol- 
itionists, hating slavery, were demanding immediate, universal 
emancipation; otherwise, disunion. The extreme Southern lead- 
ers understanding slavery, that it must be extended or die — were 
demanding extension or disunion. Mr. Lincoln saw that to give 
up the Union was to confess the failure of free constitutions be- 
fore the world — the inability of democracy to maintain itself in 
a crisis. It meant the negro abandoned. It meant weakness, 
waste p.nd perpetual warfare — if not chaos — to North and South. 
The anti-slavery cause, the cause of the Constitution and of the 
Declaration, all hung on the preservation of the Union. 

Restrict slavery, give it no new land to feed on, let the nation as 
a nation stand once more on the Declaration, preserve the Union 
and slavery will starve and suffocate. The spirit of slavery and 
the spirit of the Declaration "cannot stand together. They are as 
opposite as God and Mammon; and whosoever holds to the one 
must despise the other." This he said to the people of Illinois in 
1854; and in 1858 he tolled forth the same warning to the whole 
nation. 

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the 
house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided." 

Thus Mr. Lincoln, understanding slavery and hating it, under- 
standing the Declaration, the Constitution and the Union, and lov- 
ing them, framed the issue. Slavery is wrong; it shall not be ex- 



igo THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



tended, but restricted and left to destroy itself. The Declaration 
is right and shall be. restored. The Constitution shall be pre- 
served and the Union forever maintained. This was the broad 
issue. Lincoln made it in fifty-four ; he made it broad ; he kept it 
broad. On this issue thus framed, the whole battle was fought 
from fifty-four clear down to Appomattox. 

Is there no evidence here of intellect, of understanding, of real 
leadership ? 

The position taken and maintained in this great debate was 
not compromise — as many charged then. It was a wide view of 
the present, a far view into the future — as we understand now. 
It was not compromise in any sense; it was complete comprehen- 
sion, complete wisdom, complete sanity. 

Mr. Lincoln was always supremely sane. 

We love the leader of a forlorn hope; we love the man who 
will sacrifice all for a cause; we admire the man who speaks out — 
who utters all that he thinks or feels — and even a little more 
out of the excess of courage and sincerity; the heart leaps in sym- 
pathy with him who will not equivocate, will not excuse, will not 
retreat a single inch, and who will be heard — and even with the 
blind old fanatic who, single-handed and alone, takes up arms 
against a nation. 

Such things awe and dazzle us like a storm. But beyond the 
roar and dazzle of the storm, above the angry cloud, behind the 
thunderbolt, is the Firmament, is Providence, is Supreme Intelli- 
gence and Changeless Purpose. "God dwelleth in eternity and has 
an infinite leisure to roll forward the affairs of men." And as 
the scales fall from our eyes, shall we not more and more see and 
feel how much greater, grander, and more sublime is the silent, 
suffering intelligent patience and endurance of Lincoln, than the 
holy scorn and righteous, tempestuous wrath of these others ? 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 191 



And SO the period of debate came to an end, and the period of 
action arrived. The nation, blind and tormented, was feeling 
about for its deliverer; and we cannot believe that the hand that 
groped in darkness was left to chance or fortune; we must be- 
lieve that it was by some divine guidance that it rested finally 
upon Abraham Lincoln. 

With that pathetic farewell to his friends at Springfield, he 
journeyed down to Washington. We know what he finds there. 
Mr. Buchanan willing, as he said, to give up a part of the Con- 
stitution, or even the whole of it, if perchance he might save the 
rest, had left everything undone that ought to have been done. A 
great rebellion has been inaugurated. Mr. Lincoln confronts not 
mere ill-controlled mobs risen against the very idea of govern- 
ment, but seven sovereign states — later eleven — fully organized, 
officered, armed, equipped with all the machinery of government 
running smoothly and all compact and united for the protection 
of a vast material interest. With the seceding states have gone 
senators, representatives, secretaries, federal judges, foreign min- 
isters and consuls, army and navy commanders, inferior officers, 
heads of departments and clerks without number — carrying over 
to the enemy all the resources of knowledge, skill, experience, and 
leadership — depriving the federal government of its very memory 
and leaving every department confused, unnerved and paralyzed. 
Hidden disloyalty, more deadly than open desertions, lurks in 
every branch of the civil service. No man knows whom to trust. 
The treasury is empty. Arms, arsenals, ships, navy yards, fortifi- 
cations, and garrisons have been betrayed or abandoned. Foreign 
governments are unfriendly, prejudiced and ready to intervene. 
The people of the North are torn with confiicting views. For 
them no obvious material interest is at stake — their lives are not 
threatened, their property not endangered ; and on the question of 



192 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

right and wrong public opinion is for the moment divided, con- 
fused, without form and void. Barkness is on the face of the 
deep and even when the light dawns and the dry land of righteous- 
ness, the granite peaks and fertile plains of loyalty appear, there 
also appear here and there throughout the North the bogs and 
swamps and rotten morasses of sordid self-interest, secret sym- 
pathy, and silent treachery! 

To bring order out of such chaos, to put down such a rebellion, 
is the task confronting the new Executive. And it is not enough 
to restore order and put down the rebellion; it must be done with- 
out the destruction of popular institutions ; without injury to free 
government ; it must be done in such a way as to make the Union, 
when restored, as nearly as possible a real Union ; it must be done 
in such a way as to leave no wasting wounds — no incurable dis- 
eases in the body politic. 

And more, the crisis is new in human experience. There is 
no history, no precedent to go by. Eebellions have indeed been 
put down, but not by such governments as ours. The very mate- 
rial Lincoln has to work with is of a new sort. Napoleon put 
down a revolution, but the people had long been accustomed to 
despotic rule. There was civil war in Cromwell's time, but the 
people were wonted to one-man government. But here is a people, 
free, peaceful, unused to arms, jealous of power, and accustomed 
to no government at all in the Old World sense. Thus out of the 
character of our people and the form of our government a hun- 
dred vast and perplexing questions arise that are not new here 
alone, but new in the world. 
To such tasks, under such conditions, comes Abraham Lincoln, 
/ of Springfield, Illinois, age fifty-two, attorney-at-law, commercial 
I rating three thousand dollars besides homestead exempt. He comes 
\ without military experience, without diplomatic experience, with- 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 193 

out any experience at all, we may almost say, in the administration 
of large affairs. His personal acquaintance is small. He is a 
stranger to his own party ; and that party really a minority party, 
is new and strange to itself — made up of discordant elements bound 
together only by a determination that the Union of the whole 
country must and shall be preserved. 

The tasks are gigantic enough ; the conditions to the last degree 
perplexing; his experience and preparation almost nothing. 

On the other hand, there is the just God in Heaven in whom he 
trusts; and there is the American people whose temper and power 
he understands. He trusts in God; he understands the American 
people. 

The American people! Ah, there was the arsenal! There was 
the courage, there was the conscience, there was the overwhelm- 
ing power ! Latent, dormant, for the time being, yet there was the 
power; there it was, spread across the continent like a sleeping 
sea ! There it lay in the hearts of some millions of common Amer- 
ican men — and boys — and v/omen ! There it lay as it lies now, in 
the stored intelligence, skill, conscience, self-control, devotion, and 
invincible courage of the American people. Intelligence, con- 
science, strength, heroism were common then, as they were three 
years ago — as they are to-day. What we had then, what we have 
now, was, and is, an almost limitless store of human skill and 
capacity. It was this which constituted our real wealth then. It 
is this which constitutes our wealth and strength to-day. This Mr. 
Lincoln understood. He knew the common people. He knew the 
farm boys who could be turned into captains and colonels — good 
enough in time of war. He knew the canal drivers, the real 
estate agents and the tanners who could command armies and 
win victories. 

He said in that special message of his, "So large an army as the 



194 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

government has now on foot was never before known without a 
soldier in it but who has taken his place there of his own free 
choice. 

"But more than this: There are many single regiments whose 
members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all 
arts, sciences, professions and whatever else is known in the 
world, and there is scarcely one from which there could not be 
selected a president, a cabinet, a congress, and perhaps a court, 
abundantly competent to administer the government itself." 

It was this high and sympathetic estimate of the talent and 
capacity of the American people which enabled Mr. Lincoln to 
rally and make effective the real strength of the country. 

We cannot follow him in detail through those four years of 
blood end fire — we cannot tell the story of the war — but there it 
is in that record! There you see him pleading with the South; 
uniting the North; holding onto the border states; watching the 
newspapers; watching elections; watching public demonstrations; 
watching Congress ; controlling the various executive departments ; 
flanking copper-heads and peace Democrats; flanking his own un- 
reasonable friends; flanking regiments of office and commission- 
seekers, as well as regiments of rebels; raising troops; creating a 
navy; studying maps; planning campaigns; making, encouraging, 
stimulating, rebuking and unmaking generals ; protecting the pub- 
lic credit; pondering foreign relations; solving great constitutional 
problems; encouraging and comforting his soldiers and his people; 
issuing a steady stream of messages, proclamations, decisions and 
various state papers — all calm, matured, prudent, eloquent, wise; 
destroying four million slaves and putting in their places four 
million free men; rebuilding from the outside loyal state govern- 
ments; collecting and spending millions upon millions of wealth; 
holding as in the hollow of his hand the lives and properties of 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 195 

more than half a continent ; wielding a power really as great and 
absolute as any despot ever had in history, yet exercising that 
power reluctantly, mercifully and with scrupulous and painful re- 
gard to every constitutional limitation and every individual right. 

There he stands for four awful years, hasting not, resting not, 
looking forward and backward, surveying all, controlling all, 
like Fate or Providence itself. Calmly he takes each man's cen- 
sure; steadfastly he reserves his judgment; nothing too soon; 
nothing too late. The people must have time to think; the battle 
is theirs. Emancipation cannot come at once; its necessity must 
be seen; the border states must, if possible, be held. McClellan 
must be kept awhile; till the people and the army can see him 
as he is. Negro regiments will not do at first, but negro regi- 
ments come as Northern prejudice melts. On this general and 
that, on this question and on that, he bides his time. The present 
is not oil; there is the future. The army is not all; there are the 
people. In the midst of a war, the most gigantic of modern times, 
every move and measure must in sixty-four, in accordance with 
the constitution, be submitted to the people; the people must be 
held as well as fields of battle — for Democratic measures will^ 
never save a nation. 

And so in the fulness of time all is submitted to the people and 
by the people approved; and the war goes on and the great task 
is finally performed. The clear, simple, definite issue is abol- 
ished ; the Declaration restored, the Constitution intact, the Union 
preserved, and established on a firmer foundation. Is there not 
some evidence here of intellect and leadership ? 

We know from many speeches delivered on that journey from 
Springfield to Washington, that Mr. Lincoln himself had Ray- 
mond's doubts about his head and Phillips's doubts about his fit- 
ness to lead. let us hope that in those last bright days in early 



196 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

April, 1865, when he was down there at City Point sending in 
glad tidings hour by hour to the stern old lion of the war de- 
partment — the victory sure, the burden lifted — that he allowed 
himself a little pleasant human consciousness of the greatness 
of his leadership and the grandeur of his achievements; that for 
one fleeting moment he opened his heart to "the gentle pride and 
joy of noble fame." 

Great as was Lincoln's intellectual endowment, it was not his 
greatest. 

"A power was his beyond the touch of art, 
Of armed strength; his pure and mighty heart." 

We may pass over the dry, uninteresting, unpoetic virtues. He 
had no vices; he was scrupulously honest and scrupulously truth- 
ful. These things make an admirable man, but not necessarily 
an adorable one. Lincoln was adorable! His soul seems inde- 
scribably spacious. The mere cataloguing of admirable characteris- 
tics with incidents and illustrations will not convey the full sense 
of his magnanimity. 

Take his loyalty, his faithfulness, his deep and abiding rever- 
ence for his country's institutions. He hated slavery. Notwith- 
standing this, he said: "We are under a legal obligation to catch 
and return the runaway slaves. I confess I hate to see them 
hunted down and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil, 
but I bite my lips and keep quiet." At another time he said, 
"If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. I cannot re- 
member when I did not so think and feel; and yet I have never 
understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted 
right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was 
in the oath I took that I would preserve, protect and defend the 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 197 



Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office 
without taking the oath, nor was it in my view that I might take 
an oath to get power and break the oath in using the power." 

Thus in every emergency we find him slow and reluctant in 
the assumption and exercise of unusual or extraordinary powers 
and swift and eager in laying them down. To him, the law, the 
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, are sacred and holy. 

He was very anxious about the election in 1864. Doubtless he 
had some wish for personal approval and vindication, but we 
cannot see this personal motive in him very strong. We know he 
was weary; we know he was heavy-laden; we see him as pic- 
tured by Carpenter, gazing out toward the Virginia horizon and 
repeating to himself: 

"How sleep the brave who sunk to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest," 

and he goes on: "How willingly would I change places with the 
humblest private who sleeps to-night on the banks of the Poto- 
mac!" This was his deep mood; the end was drawing nigh for 
him ; he had passed through the fiery furnace ; the desire for earth- 
ly reward could not have been pulling very hard at his heart- 
strings then; but he believed that the fate of the blacks, the fate 
of the nation, the fate of humanity, hung upon that election; and 
he was extremely anxious for Republican victory. And yet, de- 
siring it so much, wielding a power so vast, observe how fair, how 
just, how scrupulous he is ! 

Consider his unselfishness. See how devoted he is to his cause 
and how careless of his own personal success — how inconsiderate 
always of Abraham Lincoln. In '54 he gave way to Trumbull to 
make sure of a vote in the Senate against the extension of slavery. 



198 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

In '58 he deliberately risked defeat by Douglas in order to make 
sure of national Republican success in '60. In the Douglas can- 
vass he says: "I claim no extraordinary exemption from personal 
ambition; that I like preferment as well as the average man may 
be admitted; but I protest that I have not entered this hard con- 
test solely or even chiefly for a mere personal motive." 

We cannot think of Lincoln as in the ordinary sense ambitious. 
Public affairs do not present themselves to him as an arena, a race- 
course, for Abraham Lincoln; but as a field or a vineyard to be 
made fruitful for the common good. 

When he comes to the presidential chair, how free he is of all 
consciousness of Lincoln, how unspotted by pride of any sort, how 
extremely careful of the feelings and prejudices and honor of 
other men, how careless of his own. The first inaugural is so pa- 
thetic in its appeal to the seceding states that it has been crit- 
icised as unmanly. To the border states he said : "I do not argue. 
I beseech that you make arguments for yourselves." 

All there is of Abraham Lincoln — his pride and dignity and 
honor, so-called, and reputation — every feeling and emotion of just 
and proper resentment — everything but principle — he is ever will- 
ing to sacrifice to attain the great end. 

Greater than all this was his justice, his fairness toward the 
South, his sympathy with the Southern people, his magnanimity 
toward even the leaders of the Rebellion. 

In the matter of slavery the South was guilty, but the North 
was not innocent. The South kept slaves, but the North used the 
sugar and cotton and so shared in the profit. "God gives to both 
North and South," he said, "this terrible war as the woe due to 
those by whom the offense cometh." 

He did not slur over or ignore the guilt of secession, but if you 
will observe him throughout the four years of his service, with 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 199 

the press misrepresenting him; radical anti-slavery leaders stab- 
bing him; the public at times misunderstanding him; the gov- 
ernors and generals complaining of him; his enemies jeering, his 
friends faltering, doubting and scolding; with armies meeting dis- 
aster after disaster; with the Union he loved shattered into frag- 
ments; with the slavery he hated securing perhaps a still firmer 
foothold ; with the cause of popular institutions trembling in the 
balance ; with the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, 
the wail of the widowed and fatherless ringing in his ears; torn, 
wounded, crushed in every way; suffering as only One suffered — 
there yet is not a note of scorn, not even an epithet of hate, not 
a word of bitterness in all that matchless record ! 

He had the gentlest, tenderest heart that ever beat. He could 
be firm. General Grant wired in August, 1864, that he was 
unwilling to break his hold where he then was. To which the 
President replied, ''Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull- 
dog grip and chew and choke as much as possible." This is an 
order stern and strong enough to please the most resolute, and 
yet we know he had the gentlest, tenderest heart that ever beat. 
It was always so. 

Riding across the prairies of Illinois with his fellow lawyers 
on the circuit, he discovered one day some new-fledged birds, 
blown too early out of the nest, in great distress. He stopped, dis- 
mounted, gathered the little frightened creatures in his great 
hand and hunted till he found the nest and put them back. Walk- 
ing down a street of Springfield on one occasion after his return 
from Congress, he found a little girl weeping. She was to go on a 
journey, her trunk was packed, the train was almost due, but the 
baggageman was missing. It was all arranged in a moment, 
and a huge ex-Congressman, with a trunk on his shoulder and a 
little girl by the hand, reached the station just in time. 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



■William Scott, a lad from Vermont, stood guard one night in 
place of a sick friend. The next night he was detailed on his own 
account. He was caught asleep, tried, found guilty, and sen- 
tenced to be shot by his own comrades. And thereupon, the great 
gentle-hearted President of the United States, commander-in-chief 
of the army and navy, throwing aside all his overwhelming cares 
and duties, went in person to Chain Ridge and hunted up William 
Scott, and investigated the circumstances, and issued such orders 
that William Scott died a martyred hero fighting for his coun- 
try, and not a condemned and disgraced traitor. 

Hundreds of such instances are known. He is always saying, 
"It will do the boy no good to shoot him." Everywhere you find 
yearning and pathetic appeals for opportunity to pardon. He 
never seeks excuse for severity — but always excuse for clemency. 
He is always trying to evade what he calls "this butchering busi- 
ness." His tenderness of heart is by no means confined to ques- 
tions of life and death. He appeals to have a boy's pay restored. 
"Loss of pay falls so hard upon poor families. He wants no stain 
or shadow upon any soldier's record for immaterial causes. 
Nothing more impresses you in his letters than the effort he makes 
to wound no man's feelings unnecessarily. When he says it 
pains him not to make the appointment asked for, you know it 
does. His sympathy is not assumed — it is not diplomatic; it is 
not "a glove of velvet on a hand of steel"; it is deep, sincere, in- 
exhaustible. This is not a hand of steel at all, but a warm, kind, 
human, ungloved hand of flesh and blood. 

With so much gentleness, tenderness and sympathy, no wonder 
he is described as — 



"That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 
For storms to beat on." 



ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 



And how the storms beat and what suffering is his! His proc- 
lamations plead and pray. His military dispatches sob. "How is 
it now, how is it now?" he asks. How pathetically thankful he 
is for every bit of good news. "A thousand thanks for the relief 
your dispatches give me." He suffers, but he does not flinch, 
he does not stop his ears ; he will, he must, know all, feel for all, 
care for all. Yet each added month of torture finds him gentler, 
kinder, tenderer. He loves most who suffers most. Nothing in 
all that record to incite any man to hate; not a page to harden 
any man's heart ; nothing that does not seem to cleanse and melt. 
"Die when I may," he said a little before the end, "I want it said 
of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle 
and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow." 
And so through all this rude business of battle he planted flowers 
to the end. 

His leligion was to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly 
with his God. How deep through all his fiery trials was his 
trust, how simple and sincere his faith, how complete his sub- 
mission. "And thus having chosen our course," he said in the 
beginning, without guile and with pure purpose, "let us renew 
our trust in God and go forward without fear and with manly 
hearts." And toward the end, "The purposes of the Almighty 
are perfect and must prevail. We hoped for a happy termina- 
tion of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best and 
has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom." 

Mr. Lincoln was not a self-made man, nor a luck-made man, but 
a God-made man. God needed him and God made him. God 
guided and sustained him. "And he was not, for God took him." 
When the great sad eyes were closed, Stanton said, "And now he 
belongs to the ages." A million soldiers sobbed, "My Captain, 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



my Captain !" A nation bowed its head in grief and hearts were 
washed with tears. 

Thank God for Abraham Lincoln. However lightly the words 
may sometimes pass our lips, let us speak them now and always 
of this man, sincerely, solemnly, reverently; as so often dying 
soldiers and bereaved women and little children spoke them. 
Thank God for Abraham Lincoln — for the Lincoln who died and 
whose ashes rest in Springfield — for the Lincoln who lives in the 
hearts of the American people — in their widened sympathies and 
uplifted ideals. Thank God for the work he did, is doing and is 
to do. 

Thank God for Abraham Lincoln! 



THE SEVENTEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNEE 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1903 



Address of 
HON. FRANK S. BLACK 



/ 



FRANK SWETT BLACK, LL.D. 

Ex- Governor Black was born in Limington, Me., in 
1853, and graduated at Dartmouth, in 1875. For sev- 
eral years he was employed in editorial and literary 
work. He was admitted to the Bar in 1879. From 
1895-7 lie served as a member of Congress and from 
1897-99 as Governor of the State of New York. 



I 



ADDRESS OF 

EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, there are subjects upon 
which nothing new can be said, but which still arouse the 
fervor awakened at their first enunciation. If the song was 
true when it started on its journey it will be sung as long 
as human hearts vibrate and human tongues retain the 
power of speech; it will be lisped by those tottering on toward 
the end and echoed by those whose hearts are filled with the 
promise and the glow of youth. If the product was genuine when 
it passed from the Creator's hand, it will neither be dimmed by 
age nor cheapened by familiarity; for honor is not decreased by 
contact, and truth is never out of tune. If none of the old stories 
are ever to be retold, many a noble inspiration must be lost and 
many a tender chord must remain untouched. 

This is the age, I know, when the search is at its height for the 
new and marvelous, and in this eagerness the primeval forests 
are swept away, the bowels of the earth are punctured, and even 
on the remotest sea the observant eye detects the fiutter of a sail. 
The watchword is energy, the goal is success, but in the fever of 
modern enterprise a moment's rest can do no harm. We must not 
only acquire, we must retain. We must not only learn, we must 
remember. The newest is not always the best. The date or lustre 
of the coin does not determine its metal. The substance may be 
plain and unobtrusive and still be gold. Whoever chooses without 



2o6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

a proper test may die both a pauper and a fool. The paintings of 
recent times have evoked the praise of critics, and yet thousands 
still pay their homage to an older genius. Modem literature is 
ablaze with beauty and with power, and yet millions are still 
going to one old and thumbworn text for their final consolation. 

Remembering the force of these examples, it will be profitable 
sometimes to step one side for the serious contemplation of rugged, 
lasting qualities, in whatever age or garb they have appeared. 
The hero of an hour will pass as quickly as he came. The flash- 
light will dazzle and blind, but when the eyes are rubbed the 
impression has passed away, but the landscape that comes slowly 
into view with the rising sun, growing more resplendent and dis- 
tinct with his ascending power, and fading gently from the vision 
at the approach of night, will remain in the mind forever to il- 
luminate, to strengthen and to cheer. And men are like impres- 
sions. There are more examples of the flashlight kind than there 
are fireflies on a summer's night, but there is no nobler representa- 
tive of the enduring and immortal than he in whose name this 
event is celebrated. Whoever imparts a new view of his char- 
acter must tell it to the newborn, to whom all things are new, 
for to the intelligent and mature his name and virtues have been 
long familiar. His was the power that commanded admiration 
and the humanity that invited love; mild but inflexible, just but 
merciful, great but simple, he possessed a head that commanded 
men and a heart that attracted babes. His conscience was strong 
enough to bear continual use. It was not alone for public occa- 
sions nor great emergencies. It was never a capital, but always 
a chart. It was never his servant, to be dismissed at will, but 
his companion, to be always at his side. It was with him, but 
never behind him, for he knew that a pursuing conscience is an 
accuser, and not a guide, and brings remorse instead of comfort. 



ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 207 

His greatness did not depend upon his title, for greatness was Ms 
when the title was bestowed. He leaned upon no fiction of aris- 
tocracy, and kissed no hand to obtain his rank, but the stamp of 
nobility and power which he wore was conferred upon him in that 
log hut in Kentucky that day in 1809 when the eyes that first 
beheld that sad and homely face were the eyes of Nancy Hanks — 
and it was conferred by a power which, unlike earthly potentates, 
never confers a title without a character that will adorn it. 
When we understand the tremendous advantages of a humble 
birth, when we realize that the privations of youth are the pillars 
of strength to maturer years, then we shall cease to wonder that 
out of such obscure surroundings as watched the coming of Abra- 
ham Lincoln should spring the colossal and supreme figure of 
modern history. 

Groves are better than temples, fields are better than gorgeous 
carpetings, rail fences are better than lines of kneeling slaves, 
and the winds are better than music if you are raising heroes 
and founding governments. 

Those who understand these things and have felt the heart 
of nature beat will not wonder that this man could stand the 
shock and fury of war, and yet maintain that calm serenity which 
enabled him to hear above the roar of the storm that enveloped 
him the low, smothered cry that demanded the freedom of a race. 

If you look for qualities that dazzle and bewilder you must 
seek them elsewhere than in the character of Abraham Lincoln. 
It was not by show or glitter, or by sound, that the great mo- 
ments of history were marked and the great deeds of mankind 
were wrought. The color counts for nothing. It is the fibre 
alone that lasts. The precept will be forgotten unless the deed 
is remembered. The wildest strains of martial music will pass 
away on the wind, while the grim and deadly courage of the 



2o8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

soldier, moving and acting without a word, will mark the spot 
where pilgrims of every race will linger and worship forever. 

No character in the world more clearly saw the worth of sub- 
stance and the mockery of show, and no career ever set in such 
everlasting light the doctrine that although vanity and pretence 
may flourish for a day, there can be no lasting triumph not found- 
ed on the truth. 

The life of Lincoln moved upon that high, consistent plane 
which the surroundings of his youth inspired. Poverty is a hard 
but oftentimes a loving nurse. If Fortune denies the luxury of 
wealth, she makes generous compensation in that greater love 
which they alone can ever know who have faced privations to- 
gether. The child may shiver in the fury of the blast which no 
maternal tenderness can shield him from, but he may feel a help- 
less tear drop upon his cheek which will keep him warm till the 
snows of time have covered his hair. It is not wealth that counts 
in the making of the world, but character. And character is 
best formed amid those surroundings where every waking hour 
is filled with struggle, where no flag of truce is ever sent, and 
only darkness stays the conflict. Give me the hut that is small 
enough, the poverty that is deep enough, the love that is great 
enough, and I will raise from them the best there is in human 
character. 

This lad, uncouth and poor, without aid or accidental circum- 
stance, rising as steadily as the sun, marked a path across the sky 
so luminous and clear that there is not one to mate it to be dis- 
covered in the heavens, and throughout its whole majestic length 
there is no spot or blemish in it. 

That love of justice and fair play, and that respect for order 
and the law, which must underlie every nation that would long 
endure, were deeply embedded in his nature. These, I know, are 



ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 209 

qualities destitute of show and whose names are never set to music, 
but unless there is in the people's heart a deep sense of their ever- 
lasting value, that people will neither command respect in times 
of their prosperity nor sympathy in the hour of their decay. These 
are the qualities that stand the test when hurricanes sweep by. 
These are the joints of oak that ride the storm, and when the 
clouds have melted and the waves are still, move on serenely in 
their course. Times will come when nothing but the best can save 
us. Without warning and without cause, out of a clear and 
smiling sky may descend the bolt that will scatter the weaker 
qualities to the winds. We have seen that bolt descend. There 
is danger at such a time. The hurricane will pass like the rush- 
ing of the sea. Then is the time to determine whether govern- 
ments can stand amid such perilous surroundings. The American 
character has been often proved superior to any test. No danger 
can be so great and no calamity so sudden as to throw it off its 
guard. This great strength in times of trial and this self-re- 
straint in times of wild excitement have been attained by years 
of training, precept and experience. Justice has been seen so 
often to emerge triumphant from obstacles which seemed to chain 
her limbs and make the righteous path impossible, that there is 
now rooted in the American heart the faith that, no matter how 
dark the night, there will somehow break through at the appointed 
hour a light which shall reveal to eager eyes the upright forms 
of Justice and the Law, still moving hand in hand, still supreme 
over chaos and despair, the image and the substance of the world's 
sublime reliance. 

I should not try, if all the time were mine, to present Lincoln 
as an orator, lawyer, statesman or politician. His name and his 
performances in the lines which he pursued have been cut into the 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



rock of American history with the deepest chisel yet made use of 
on this continent. 

But it is not by the grandeur of his powers that he has most 
appealed to me, but rather by those softer, homelier traits which 
bring him down to a closer and more affectionate view. 

The mountain that pushes its summit to the clouds is never so 
magnificent to the observer on the plain below as when by some 
clear and kindly light its smaller outlines are revealed. 

And Lincoln was never more imposing than when the milder 
attributes of his nature came in view. He was genuine, he was 
affectionate, and after all is said and the end is reached what is 
there without these two? You may measure the heights and 
sound the depths; you may gain the great rewards of power and 
renown; you may quiver under the electric current of applause — 
the time will come when these will fall from you like the rags 
that cover your body. The robes of power and the husks of pre- 
tense will alike be stripped away, and you must stand at the end 
as you stood at the beginning, revealed. Under such a test 
Abraham Lincoln might stand erect, for no man loved the hum- 
bler, nobler traits more earnestly than he. Whatever he pre- 
tended to be, he was; genuine and sincere, he did not need em- 
bellishment. There is nothing in the world which needs so little 
decoration or which can so well afford to spurn it altogether as 
the absolutely genuine. Imitations are likely to be exposed, 
unless carefully ornamented. Too much embellishment generally 
covers a blemish in the construction. It therefore happens that 
the first rate invariably rejects adornment and the second rate 
invariably puts it on. The difference between the two can be 
discovered at short range, and safety from exposure lies only 
in imperfect examination. If the vision is clear and the inspec- 
tion careful, there is no chance for the sham ever to be taken for 



ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 211 

the genuine. And that is why it happens that among all the 
forms of activity in this very active age no struggle is more sharp 
than that of the first rate to be found out and of the second not 
to be. It is easier to conceal what a thing is than to prove it to 
be what it is not. The first requires only concealment, the second 
requires demonstration. Sooner or later the truth will appear. 
Some time the decorations will fall off, and then the blemish will 
appear all the greater because of the surprise at finding it. 

None have less to fear from such a test than Abraham Lincoln, 
and his strength in that regard arose, it seems to me, from the 
preservation through all his life of that fondness for his early 
home, of the tender recollections of his family and their strug- 
gles, which kept his sympathy always warm and young. He was 
never so great but that the ties of his youth still bound him. He 
was never so far away but that he could still hear the note of the 
evening bird in the groves of his nativity. 

They say the tides of the ocean ebb and flow by a force which, 
though remote, always retains its strength. And so with this 
man, whether he rose or fell, whether he stood in that giant-like 
repose that distinguished him among his fellow men, or exer- 
cised that unequaled power, which, to my mind, made him the 
foremost figure of the world, yet he always felt the tender and in- 
visible chord that chained him to his native rock. In whatever 
field he stood he felt the benign and sobering influences of his 
early recollections. They were the rock to which he clung in 
storms, the anchor which kept his head to the wind, the balm 
which sustained him in defeat and ennobled him in the hour of 
triumph. 

I shall not say he had not his faults, for is there any hope that 
man will pass through this vale of tears without them ? Is there 
any danger that his fellow-men will fail to detect and proclaim 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



them? He was not small in anything; he was carved in deep 
lines like all heroic figures, for dangerous altitudes and great 
purposes. And as we move away from him, and years and events 
pass between us, his form will still be visible and distinct, for 
such characters, built upon courage and faith, and that loyalty 
which is the seed of both, are not the playthings, but the mas- 
ters of time. 

How long the names of men will last no human foresight can 
discover, but I believe that even against the havoc and confusion 
in which so many names go down, the fame of Lincoln will stand 
as immovable and as long as the pyramids against the rustle of 
the Egyptian winds. 



THE EIGHTEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1904 



Address of 



HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 



I 



HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE, A.M., LL.D. 

Mr. Mabie was bom in Cold Spring, N. Y., in 1846. 
He graduated from Williams College and Columbia Uni- 
versity. He has been for several years associate editor 
of "The Outlook"; and is the author of numerous vol- 
umes of essays, of which the best known are "My Study 
Fire," 1890 and 1894; "Essays in Literary Interpreta- 
tion," 1892; "Books and Culture," 1898; "William 
Shakspere — Poet, Dramatist and Man," 1900; "Works 
and Days," 1902; "The Great Word," 1905. 

I 



I 



ADDRESS OF 

HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen — Among the fairy stories of 
achievement that have been told, or better still, that have been 
lived on this continent, none certainly is more inspiring than that 
which is told of the man whose memory we recall to-night. And 
I can think of nothing for the moment more profitable than to 
trace the stages by which this man fitted himself for the great 
work which he so magnificently performed. It has been the 
theory in this country — we are fast learning better — that heroes 
are born, not made. As a matter of fact the hero must not only 
be born, but made. In our emphasis upon individual initiative, 
upon the native force of the man, upon the power of character, 
we have sometimes undervalued the power and the necessity of 
education. We are in the condition, I think, of the man who was 
asked if he played the violin, and replied: "I don't know; I never 
have tried." This attitude was illustrated by the small boy in 
the country town, the hope and pride of his family, who was sent 
to the office of the village lawyer to study law, and at the end of 
the first day when his father said to him: "Well, Jim, what do 
you think of the law?" ''I don't think much of it," he replied; 
"'tain't what they say it is. I am sorry I learned it." 

Every natural force, every native talent, which is to reach its 
end, its highest development, must be trained, and there never 
yet was a great force well directed to a great end which was 



2i6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

not intelligently directed, and never a great man climbed to a 
great height who did not plan his ascent, never a great achieve- 
ment made that was not made as the result of a long preparation. 
The victories of life are not to be explained on the ground where 
they are won. The victories of life, like victories of war, are won 
years in advance of the day when the battle is waged. The vic- 
tory in Port Arthur a day or two ago was not won suddenly, be- 
cause a group of audacious and brave men dashed without intelli- 
gence or forethought or premeditation into that great harbor. 
It has been in the way of being won every day for the last ten 
years. The battle of Manila was not won in the harbor of 
Manila; it was won years before at Annapolis, and it was won 
again in the preparation at Hong Kong. Never a great deed 
done that is not done because a man has made himself ready to do 
the deed. No man ever yet rose obscure, summoned by any sud- 
den call in any great assembly, and sat down famous because the 
hour inspired him. No man, as you know, ladies and gentlemen, 
from long and suffering experience, ever has anything in him 
when he is on his feet that he did not have in him when he sat 
in his chair. But when, as sometimes happens, a man is suddenly 
called out by some sudden emergency and says the word that 
goes ringing home to the very heart of the Nation, you will 
find that that speech has been in preparation perhaps all the 
earlier years of his life, just as Webster's superb description of 
British rule following the sun's came to him years before its de- 
livery on the citadel of Quebec and awaited the hour and the place 
when it could be brought from the silence in which it was waiting 
all those years. No man ever does anything great by accident. 
Men do great things because they have the capacity to do them 
and because they have trained that capacity. They make g^reat 



ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 217 

achievements because there is in them the force of heroism and 
because also they have prepared themselves to snatch the prize 
when the opportunity arises. 

Abraham Lincoln is often numbered among the uneducated, and 
his career is pointed out among those careers which are supposed 
to stimulate the man who relies wholly on natural capacity, na- 
tive pluck and ambition. All these qualities Abraham Lincoln 
had, but I venture to say that no man in Abraham Lincoln's time 
was better educated than he, and perhaps no man was so well 
educated as he to do the work which God appointed him to do. 

He was born of heroic stock, and he educated himself to be the 
hero that he became. There is no accident in that long career, 
no chance in that magnificent ascent from the old frontier to 
the martyr's place in Washington and to the larger place in the 
Pantheon of the world's heroes. Every step of that ascent was 
made with patient feet and intelligent purpose, and with fore- 
cast and grasp on the things that were to be done and the prepa- 
ration that was to be made for the doing of them. I believe that 
Abraham Lincoln's education can be traced just as definitely as 
the education of William E. Gladstone, as thoroughly trained a 
public man as our time, or perhaps any time, has known. Do not 
make the mistake, however, that we are so much in the habit 
of making, of identifying education entirely with academic or 
formal processes. Fortunate is the man who has the aid of the 
best instrumentalities and influences in his training; but a man 
does not need to go to a university in order to become educated, 
and there are thousands of men who do go to universities with- 
out becoming educated. Education may be gotten along the solid 
highway which it has taken the best thought and the best brain 
and the greatest self-denial of men in all generations to build, or 
it may be taken in every by-path by which an inspiring and fore- 



318 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

casting soul makes its way out of obscurity into reputation and 
influence. 

Born on the old frontier, under conditions so crude and harsh 
that it is almost impossible for us to recall them vividly to-day, the 
man whom we honor to-night had the smallest possible opportu- 
nities of formal education. His schooling altogether, as he has 
told us, was by "littles," and those littles were compassed within 
a year. Of the text-book, the blackboard and the recitation he 
knew little; but from the beginning he seems to have been pos- 
sessed with one of the greatest passions and one of the most lib- 
erating that can take hold of a man's soul — a passion for knowl- 
edge. In every class of which he was a member he stood at the 
head, and by the testimony of the boys who stood with him, he 
easily passed them all. Every book he could lay his hands on 
he mastered. From the very beginning his eager feet seemed to 
have turned to the fore; that open, keen, acute mind of his seems 
to have fastened upon everything that could educate him; every 
bit of knowledge, every bit of spare time. Lincoln compassed 
one great secret; he learned the secret of putting detached fiv& 
and ten minutes together, and sometimes I think that a man that 
has learned how to husband his minutes and put the detached min- 
utes together, has gained the power of becoming a highly educated 
man. Lincoln had a few books. You know it has been said that 
only three books are necessary to make a library — the Bible, 
Shakespeare and Blackstone's Commentaries. All these books Lin- 
coln had ; every one of those books Lincoln knew intimately. But 
Lincoln had other books as well. He had, to begin with, that 
great literature in sixty-six volumes with which many of us are 
now so unfamiliar, that we call the Bible; a library which in- 
cludes almost every literary form, which touches the loftiest 
heights of human aspiration and sounds the depths of human ex- 



ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 219 

perience and conveys truth to us in the noblest eloquence, both of 
prose and of verse. This library was sufficient in itself for a 
man who could read it as Lincoln could, without the aid of com- 
mentaries and with the flash of the imagination, the power of 
going to the place where a book lives, which is worth all other 
kinds of power in dealing with the book. Such a man could be 
lifted out of provincialism, not only into the great movement of 
the world, but into the companionship of some of the loftiest of 
souls that have ever lived, by this single book. And then he had 
that mine of knowledge of life and of character, ^sop's Fables, 
at his fingers' ends, so that in all his talk, and later in public 
life, these fables served the happiest uses of illustration; and he 
had that masterpiece of clear presentation, Kobinson Crusoe. He 
was intimately familiar with that well of English undefiled which 
I think more than any other influence colored and shaped his style 
— Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." 

We who read not only three or four newspapers in the morning 
but a half a dozen different editions during the day, who live not 
only in our own time but in the minutes of that time, who 
rarely have a chance to read a book, what do we know in this 
busy age of the education that a man can get out of four great 
books which deal not with the passing moments but with the 
centuries, and for that matter, with the eternities? This was 
the education that Abraham Lincoln had. 

He borrowed that old-fashioned book which is responsible for 
a great deal of misinformation, Weems' Life of Washington. And 
when, in 1861, he spoke in the Senate at Trenton, he said that 
so thoroughly had he absorbed that book, that he could see Wash- 
ington crossing the Delaware and could recall all the details of 
the brilliant march on Trenton and the brilliant march on Prince- 
ton; those demonstrations of the patient generalship of Washing- 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



ton which first caught the attention of Europe and made him an 
authority in the eyes of military experts. Lincoln borrowed that 
book of a neighbor and took it home. After he had read it he 
put it between the logs of the log cabin and in the night it rained, 
and the water, penetrating the mud, soiled the book and discol- 
ored it. When he saw it in the morning, he was in great trepida- 
tion. He went to the man who owned it and told him the story, 
feeling that nothing he could do could compensate for the injury 
to that priceless volume. And this neighbor said: "Well, Abe, 
seeing it's you I won't be hard on you; you give me three days* 
corn shucking and you may have the book." And Lincoln took 
the book and after he had read it he said to the same neighbor: 
"I do not always intend to be logging and flat-boating and shuck- 
ing corn ; I am going to study for a profession." 

Later he came upon Shakespeare and Burns, whom he learned 
afterwards to love, and whom he knew so intimately that he be- 
came an acute critic of both writers. Now the man who knows 
his Shakespeare knows pretty much all that is to be known of 
life; and if he can put the Bible back of it, he has a very com- 
plete education. 

All the accounts tell us that Lincoln was always at work with 
his books when he was not at work with his plough or some other 
instrument. Whenever there was five minutes of time Lincoln 
was using that time for study. At the end of the day he came 
home, cut off a bit of corn bread, and, as one of his companions 
tells us, drew up a chair, cocked his legs up higher than his head, 
took out his book and read until the light faded ; and then he read 
by what artificial light he could find. So that in season and out 
of season this boy's passion led him from book to book, until within 
the range of fifty miles there was not a volume which he had 
not read. 



ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 



Well, gentlemen, this would have made him what Bacon calls 
a full man, but it would not have made him the man of expres- 
sion which he later became. He not only had the passion for 
knowledge, but he had the passion for expression, and there was 
not a flat surface or smooth surface of any kind within his reach 
that did not bear witness to his endeavor to train himself in the 
use of language. The flat sides of logs, the wooden ash shovel, 
the sides of shingles, scraps of paper, anything on which a man 
could make a mark; on all these things Lincoln put his hiero- 
glyphics, and these hieroglyphics were to spell out his fortune, 
his influence and his power in the future. 

Years afterwards, when he was making those marvelous speeches 
in this part of the country which began in Cooper Union in this 
city, a professor of English in one of our universities went to 
hear him, attracted by his attitude on public questions, and was 
astonished at his command of English, the purity, lucidity and 
persuasiveness of his style. He heard him three times in succes- 
sion and then called at his hotel and sent his card up, and when 
Mr. Lincoln came into the room he said to him: "Mr. Lincoln, I 
have come here to ask you a single question: 'Where did you get 
your style V " Mr. Lincoln was astonished to know he had such 
a thing as style, but the question being pressed home to him, he 
thought a minute and said: "When I was a boy I began, and I 
kept up for many years afterward, the practice of taking note of 
every word spoken during the day or read during the day which 
I did not understand, and after I went to bed at night I thought 
of it in connection with the other words until I saw its meaning, 
and then I translated it into some simpler word which I knew." 

Now, gentlemen, if you knew the "Pilgrim's Progress" by heart 
and you made it a practice every night to translate everything 
you had heard during the day into language of the quality of the 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



Pilgrim's Progress, there is no English education I venture to 
say in any university which would so thoroughly equip you to a 
command of language and the power of persuasion. And that 
was the way that Abraham Lincoln learned to use the kind of 
English that he had at his fingers' ends. 

That was a talking age — an age electric with the stir of 
great questions. Men never met anywhere in Lincoln's neighbor- 
hood and time that they did not instantly fall into discussion. 
Books were few, newspapers much fewer in that time than this. 
Whenever men met they began to talk. In every little gathering 
at the crossroads, in every country tavern and country store and 
school-house the endless debate went on. Lincoln had the best 
practice which a man who was going to do his work could pos- 
sibly have had in these endless discussions, in these countless 
school-rooms in the Central West of that day; and it was noted 
long before he had become a mature man that wherever that gaunt 
figure was seen and that voice was uttering its speech, men were 
glad to listen, just as they used to gather around the ragged 
gown and the worn-out shoes of Sam Johnson at Oxford, because 
this ragged undergraduate had something to say in a kind of 
English that everybody could understand. 

Lincoln had insatiable curiosity and he had rare opportunities; 
he had this book education, persistently and intelligently carried 
on; and he learned his language because he saw the value of it 
and discovered the individual method ; and he had the practice in 
speech of the time and the countiy in which he lived. All these 
specifically trained him for expression. 

But where did the man's larger education come from — his grasp 
of great questions, his ability to discern fundamental principles, 
his insight into the life of his time? Ah, gentlemen, that is the 
education he got in the University of America. It is here that 



ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 223 

we come face to face with the fundamental influences, and I be- 
lieve the very noblest characteristic of the democratic life. There 
are many points at which it is a serious question whether a de- 
mocracy is the best form of government. If it be true, as a great 
German publicist has said, that administration is two-thirds of 
liberty, then certainly we have a great deal to learn before we 
have developed the highest uses of liberty and mastered all its re- 
sources. So far as protection to the individual is concerned, so 
far as guardianship of privacy is concerned, so far as comfort 
is concerned, so far as ministration to the sense of beauty is con- 
cerned, we have a great deal to learn from our friends across the 
sea, and it will be a blessed thing if we learn it in a century. 

And it is a serious question, too, whether the democratic form 
of government is not the most expensive form of government in 
the world. So far as we have failed to realize the ideals of those 
who cared most for it, we have failed because we have not been 
willing to pay the price which our government exacts. It is 
true, as Benjamin Kidd said, that the fundamental defect in Amer- 
ica is the lack of civic self-sacrifice, and our institutions will never 
be what they can be until our American people are willing to 
pay a great deal more in time and strength and thought for their 
public life than they have ever yet been willing to pay. But 
one great redeeming quality at the heart of it all, the influence 
that issues out of our life itself — of which Abraham Lincoln was 
the product — is the American spirit. Out of the very heart of our 
life came the influences which shaped Lincoln. There is nothing 
so searching as the atmosphere of the country in which a man is 
born. To be born in England is to be born to an inheritance of 
fifteen hundred years of free civic life, to belief in patriotism and 
honesty and honor and to respect for capacity and contempt for 
weakness. To be born in America is to be born to the conception 



224 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

that a man is a man, no matter what his condition is; that every 
man carries his fortune in his own hands, that all things are open, 
and that in a democratic society every man goes to the place 
where he belongs. 

Now that spirit playing on Abraham Lincoln made him the 
man that he was, opened every door to him, stimulated his am- 
bition and drove him step by step up that long ascending way. No 
man has ever yet shown a more remarkable power of being trained 
by conditions and events than he — a poor, uneducated, untrained 
boy on the old frontier, then a provincial lawyer, then a State 
legislator, then a representative of his State in Congress, elected 
by a section of his country, he became at last the President of 
the United States. And it is his superb and unique honor that he 
outgrew every trace of sectionalism as he went along. And al- 
though he was called upon to rule over a divided household he 
thought of it always, and he dealt with it always, as if it was 
one and indivisible. 

I do not need to tell you that a man who has this capacity for 
growth; who left the frontier behind him, who outgrew Sangamon 
County, who was larger than Illinois, who was greater than the 
North, who became at last the President of the whole United 
States, even in disunion, the first national President, was not ma- 
chine-made. A politician in his skill, his knowledge, his adroit- 
ness, he was a statesman by instinct and dealt with fundamental 
principles; when he thought of the country he thought not of 
the North, of the South, of the East or of the West, but the United 
States of America. 

Several years ago I was coming down from the Senate Cham- 
ber in Washington in company with two of the oldest member-s of 
that body, veterans in the public service. They began to recall 
earlier times in their history, and they recalled that almost tragic 



ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 225 

morning when Mr. Lincoln came to his Capitol rather as a fugitive 

than as President of the United States. They remembered how he 

came on to the floor of the House of Representatives, the body of 

which they were both members, at that time, and how, as they 

looked across in the dull light of that late February or early March 

morning and saw that tall, gaunt, unkempt figure standing there, 

although they both knew him and respected him, their hearts 

sank and they wondered whether that ungainly man could be 

equal to the crisis which they saw fast approaching. You know 

how the men of his own party questioned and doubted, you know 

the misgivings of the people at large, you know what a storm of 

criticism and comment, suggestion and appeal broke over him; 

you know how he seemed to waver sometimes from side to side, 

how he seemed to be watching the current of public opinion. As 

Mrs. Stowe has beautifully said, he was like a great cable, rising 

and falling with every tide, and yet fast bound at either end. 

You know how one by one the men of his own official family had 

to learn that he was the master of his own administration; you 

know how gradually the faith in his judgment and sagacity grew 

in his own party ranks; you know how the people came to trust 

him; how even his enemies, at least those who stood against him, 

at last began to discern his nobility and his generosity; and then 

at the very climax of his career, when the clouds parted at last 

and the sun shone after that dreadful tempest, and the birds sang 

once more, that last thunderbolt struck him and there began that 

marvelous transformation which changed the uncouth boy of the 

old frontier into the hero of the Nation and one of the great heroes 

of modern times. 

First, untutored vigor, then tempered strength, then a great 
human character with infinite depths of patience and infinite 
power of endurance. First, as Thorwaldsen has said, the clay 



226 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

model, then the plaster cast, then the finished marble. And when 
at the end of that struggle the oldest of American universities 
gathered her children about her to commemorate her own heroic 
dead, and called upon one of the greatest American poets to sing 
their requiem, Lowell made the "Commemoration Ode" — one of the 
nearest approaches to great poetry yet achieved on this continent 
— a pedestal on which to place the statue of one whom he called 
"The First American." 



THE NINETEENTH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 13, 1905 



Address of 
HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 



JONATHAN PRENTISS DOLLIVER, LL.D, 

Senator DoUiver was bom in 1858, near Kingwood, 
Preston Co., W. Va., and graduated from West Virginia 
University, in 1875. He was admitted to the bar in 1878 
and established a practice in Iowa. From 1889- 1901 h« 
was Member of Congress from the Tenth Iowa Dis- 
trict, and from 1900 U. S. Senator from Iowa. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : It has been a good many 
years, fourteen, I think, since I had the opportunity of joining 
this club, and one would think that the lapse of that time would 
be enough to get a man out of the habit of making after-dinner 
speeches unless he had become, like my friend, Secretary Root, 
and others here, hopelessly addicted to it. 

The first thing that strikes me is that a good many people have 
joined this club since I did, and the next thing, that you have had 
the wisdom to invite your wives here to see that you get home 
all right. 

It is a circumstance of unusual interest that the President is 
here; not counting it beneath our highest ofiicial dignity to 
mingle freely with his political associates, in the party organiza- 
tion of which he is a member, and to add the inspiration of his 
eloquent counsel to their celebration of the birthday of the first 
great Republican leader. For, while the memory of Abraham 
Lincoln is too great to be claimed by a political party, too great 
to belong to a single nation, too great to be absorbed in the re- 
nown of one century, yet there is a sense so sacred that it barely 
admits of the suggestion in which his name is our peculiar pos- 
session, the most precious thing in our Republican inheritance. 
The ministry of his life was to all parties; to all peoples; to all 
ages. Sut to the children of the old Republican homestead has 



230 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

been confided, under the bonds of an especial obligation, the care 
of his fame and the keeping of his faith. 

Within less than half a century this man, once despised, once 
derided, once distrusted and maligned, has been transfigured, in 
the light of universal history, so that all men and all generations 
of men may see him and make out if possible the manner of man 
he was. His life in this world was not long, less than three score 
years; only ten of them visible above the dead level of affairs. 
Yet into that brief space events were crowded, so stupendous in 
their ultimate significance, that we find ourselves laying down 
the narrative which records them, with a strange feeling coming 
over us, that may be after all we are not reading about a man 
at all, but about some mysterious personality, in the hands of 
the higher Powers, with a supernatural commission to help and 
to bless the human race. Our book shelves were filling up so fast 
with apocryphal literature of the Civil War that if it had not 
been for the loving labors of the two men, John Hay and John 
G. Nicolay, who knew him best, and have gathered up the frag- 
ments of his life, so that nothing has been lost, we would have 
had by this time only a blurred and doubtful picture of his re- 
tiring and unpretentious character. 

Some have told us that he was a great lawyer. He was noth- 
ing of the sort. It is true that he grasped without apparent 
effort the principles of the common law, and his faculties were 
so normal and complete that he did not need a commentary, nor a 
copy of the Madison papers, thumb-marked by the doubts and fears 
of three generations, to make him sure that the men who made 
the Constitution were building for eternity. But he practiced 
law without a library, and all who were acquainted with him 
testify that in a law suit he was of no account, unless he knew the 
right was on his side. It was against his intellectual and his 



ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 231 

moral grain to accept Lord Bacon's cynical suggestion that there 
is no way of knowing whether a cause be good or bad till the jury 
had brought in its verdict. 

The familiar judicial circuit around Springfield, where he 
cracked his jokes about the office stove in country taverns, where 
he spoke to everybody by his first name and everybody liked to 
hear him talk, did much for him in every way; but the noble 
profession, so ably represented about this board, will bear me wit- 
ness that an attorney who gives his advice away for nothing, who 
does not have the foresight to ask for a retainer, and usually 
lacks the business talent to collect his fee, whatever other merits 
he may have, is not cut out by nature for a lawyer. I have talked 
with many of the oldtime members of the bar at which he used 
to practice law, thinking all the while of other things, and from 
what they say I cannot help believing that the notion even then 
was slowly forming in his mind, that he held a brief, with Power 
of Attorney from on High, for the unnumbered millions of his 
fellow men and was only loitering around the county seats of 
Illinois until the case came on for trial. 

Some tell us that he was a great orator. If that is so, the 
standards of the schools, ancient and modern, must be thrown 
away. Perhaps they ought to be; and when they are this curious 
circuit-rider of the law; who refreshed his companions with 
wit and argument from the well of English undefiled ; this cham- 
pion of civil liberty, confuting Douglas with a remorseless logic, 
cast in phrases rich with the homely wisdom of proverbial lit- 
erature; this advocate of the people, head and shoulders above his 
brethren, stating their case before the bar of history, in sentences 
so simple that a child can follow them; surely such a one cannot 
be left out of the company of the masters who have added some- 
thing to the conquests of the mother tongue. He was dissatisfied 



232 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

with his modest address at Gettysburg, read awkwardly from poor- 
ly written manuscript; and thought Edward Everett's oration 
was the best he had ever heard, but Mr. Everett himself discerned 
without a minute for reflection, that the little scrap of crumpled 
paper which the President held in his unsteady hand that day 
would be treasured from generation to generation after his own 
laborious deliverance had been forgotten. The old school of ora- 
tory and the new met on that rude platform among the graves 
under the trees, and congratulated each other. They have not 
met very often since, for both of them have been pushed aside 
to make room for the essayists, the declaimers, the statisticians, 
and other enterprising pedlars of intellectual wares, who have de- 
scended like a swarm on all human deliberations. 

He has been described as a great statesman. If by that you 
mean that he was trained in the administrative mechanism of the 
government, or that he was wiser than his day in the creed of 
the party in whose fellowship he passed his earlier years, there is 
little evidence of that at all; the most that can be said is that 
he clung to the fortunes of the old Whig leadership through evil, 
as well as good report, and that he stumped the county and after- 
wards the State ; but the speeches which he made, neither he nor 
anybody else regarded it important to preserve. His platform 
from the first was brief and to the point. "I am in favor of a 
national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement sys- 
tem, and a high protective tariff." But while for half his life 
he followed Henry Clay, like a lover more than a disciple, yet 
when that popular hero died and Lincoln was selected to make 
a memorial address in the old State House, he dismissed the prin- 
ciples of his party creed without a word, and reserved his tribute 
for the love of liberty and the devotion of the Union which shone 
even to the end, in that superb career. 



ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 233 

To speak of Lincoln as a statesman, whatever adjectives you 
use, opens no secret of his biography and rather seems to me to 
belittle the epic grandeur of the drama in which he moved. Of 
course he was a statesman; exactly so, Saul of Tarsus, setting out 
from Damascus, became a famous traveller, and Christopher Co- 
lumbus, inheriting a taste for the sea, became a mariner of high 
repute. 

There are some who have given a study, more or less profound, 
to the official records of the rebellion who make of Lincoln an 
exceptional military genius, skilful in the management of armies 
and prepared better even than his generals to give direction to 
their movements. I doubt this very much. He was driven into the 
war department by the exigency of the times, and if he towered 
above the ill-fitting uniforms, which made their way, through one 
influence and another, to positions of brief command during the 
first campaigns of the Civil War, it is not very high praise after 
all. One thing, however, he must be given credit for; he per- 
ceived the size of the undertaking which he had in hand, and he 
kept looking until his eyes were weary for the man who could 
grasp the whole field and get out of the Army what he knew 
was in it. It broke his heart to see its efforts scattered and 
thrown away by quarrels among its officers, endless in number, 
and unintelligible for the most part to the outside world. When 
he passed the command of the Army of the Potomac over to Gen- 
eral Hooker, he did it in terms of reprimand and admonition, 
which read like a father's last warning to a wayward son. He 
told him that he had wronged his country and done a gross 
injustice to a brother officer. Recalling Hooker's insubordinate 
suggestion that the Army and the Government both needed a 
dictator, he reminded him that "only those generals who gain 
successes can set up dictators," and added, with a humor as grim 



234 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

as death, "what I now ask of you is military success, and I will 
risk the dictatorship." If the General did not tear up his com- 
mission when he read that letter it was because he was brave 
enough to bear the severity of the naked truth. 

All this time he had his eye upon a man in the West, who 
had been doing an extensive business down in Tennessee, "a 
copious worker and fighter, but a very meagre writer," as he 
afterwards described him in a telegram to Burnside. He had 
watched him with attentive interest, noticing particularly that 
his plans always squared with the event; that he never regretted 
to report; and after Vicksburg fell and the tide of invasion had 
been rolled back from the borders of Maryland and Pennsylvania, 
he wrote two letters, one to General Meade, calling him to a stem 
account for not following up his victory, and one to General 
Grant directing him to report to Washington for duty. The 
letter to General Meade, now resting peacefully in Nicolay's col- 
lection of the writings of Lincoln, all the fires of its wrath long 
since gone out, was never sent. But General Grant got his. And 
from that day there were no more military orders from the White 
House, no exhortations to advance, no despatches to move upon 
the enemy's works. He still had his own ideas how the job ought 
to be done, but he did not even ask the General to tell him his. He 
left it all to him. And as the plan of the great Captain unfolded, 
he sent to his headquarters this exultant message: 

"I begin to see it. You will succeed. God bless you all. 

"A. Lincoln." 

And so these two, each adding something to the other's fame, 
go down to history together; God's blessing falling like a bene- 
diction upon the memory of both. 



ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 235 

The whole world now knows his stature. But while he lived 
hardly anybody was able to take his measure. The foremost 
statesman of his Cabinet, after pestering him for a month with 
contradictory pieces of advice, placed before him a memorandum, 
grotesque in its assumption of superior wisdom, which ended with 
an accommodating proposal to take the responsibilities of the 
administration off his hands. After the battle of Bull Kun even 
so incorruptible a patriot as Edwin M. Stanton, known in after 
years as the organizer of victory, wrote to James Buchanan, then 
living near the Capital in the quiet of his country seat at Wheat- 
land, these words of mockery and contempt: 

"The imbecility of the administration culminated in that 
catastrophe; and irretrievable misfortune and national disgrace 
never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of peaceful pur- 
suits and national bankruptcy as the result of Lincoln's 'running 
the machine' for five full months." 

From the sanctum of the old Tribune, where for a generation 
Horace Greeley had dominated the opinions of the people as no 
American editor has done before or since his day, came a confi- 
dential letter, a maudlin mixture of enterprise and despair; a 
despair which, after seven sleepless nights, had given up the fight ; 
an enterprise which sought for inside information of the inevita- 
ble hour of the surrender near at hand. "You are not consid- 
ered a great man," said Mr. Greeley for the President's eye alone. 

Who is this, sitting all night long on a lounge in the public 
offices of the White House, listening, with the comments of a 
quaint humor, to privates and officers and scared Congressmen and 
citizens, who poured across the Long Bridge from the first bat- 
tlefield of the rebellion to tell their tale of woe to the only man 
in Washington who had sense enough left to appreciate it, or 
patience enough left to listen to it? Is it the log cabin student, 



236 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

learning to read and write by the light of the kitchen fire in 
the woods of Indiana? It is he. Can it he the adventurous 
voyager of the Missisippi, who gets ideas of lifting vessels over 
riffles while he worked his frail craft clear of obstructions in the 
stream; and ideas broad as the free skies, of helping nations 
out of barbarism as he traced the divine image in the faces of men 
and women chained together, under the hammer, in the slave- 
market at New Orleans? It is he. Can it be the awkward farm 
hand of the Sangamon who covered his bare feet in the fresh 
dirt which his plow had turned up to keep them from getting 
sunburned, while he sat down at the end of the furrow to rest 
his team and to regale himself with a few more pages of worn 
volumes borrowed from the neighbors? It is he. Can it be the 
country lawyer who rode on horseback from county to county, 
with nothing in his saddlebags except a clean shirt and the code 
of Illinois to try his cases and to air his views in the cheerful 
company which always gathered about the court house? It is 
he. Is it the daring debater, blazing out for a moment with 
the momentous warning "A house divided against itself cannot 
stand," then falling back within the defenses of the Constitution, 
that the cause of liberty, hindered already by the folly of its 
friends, might not make itself an outlaw in the land? It is he. 
Is it the weary traveller who begged the prayers of anxious neigh- 
bors as he set out for the last time from home, and talked in lan- 
guage sad and mystical of One who could go with him, and re- 
main with them and be everywhere for good? It is he. 

They said he laughed in a weird way that night on the sofa 
in the public offices of the White House, and they told funny tales 
about how he looked, and the comic papers of London and New 
York portrayed him in brutal pictures of his big hands; hands 
that were about to be stretched out to save the civilization of the 



ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 237 

world; and his overgrown feet; feet that for four torn and bleed- 
ing years were not to weary in the service of mankind. They 
said that his clothes did not fit him; that he stretched his long 
legs in ungainly postures; that he was common and uncouth in 
his appearance. Some said that this being a backwoodsman was 
becoming a rather questionable recommendation for a President 
of the United States; and they recalled with satisfaction the grace 
of courtly manners brought home from St. James'. Little did 
they dream that the rude cabin yonder on the edge of the hill 
country of Kentucky was about to be transformed by the tender 
imagination of the people into a mansion more stately than the 
White House; more royal than all the palaces of the earth; it 
did not shelter the childhood of a king, but there is one thing 
in this world more royal than a king — it is a man. 

They said he jested and acted unconcernedly as he looked at peo- 
ple through eyes that moved slowly from one to another in the 
crowd. They did not know him; or they might have seen that 
he was not looking at the crowd at all; that his immortal spirit 
was girding for its ordeal. And if he laughed, it may be that 
he heard cheerful voices from above; for had he not read some- 
where that He that sitteth in the heavens sometimes looks down 
with laughter and derision upon the impotent plans of men to 
turn aside the everlasting purposes of God? 

It took his countrymen the full four years to find Abraham 
Lincoln out. By the light of the camp fires of victorious armies 
they learned to see the outline of his gigantic figure, to assess the 
integrity of his character, to comprehend the majesty of his con- 
science; and when at last they looked upon his care-worn face 
as the nation reverently bore his body to the grave, through their 
tears they saw him exalted above all thrones in the affection of 
the human race. 



238 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

We have been accustomed to think of the Civil "War as an affair 
of armies, for we come of a fighting stock and the military instinct 
in us needs little cultivation or none at all. But it requires no 
very deep insight into the hidden things of history to see that 
the real conflict was not between armed forces, was not on bat- 
tlefields, nor under the walls of besieged cities; and that fact 
makes Abraham Lincoln greater than all his generals, greater 
than all his admirals, greater than all the armies and all the 
navies that responded to his proclamation. He stands apart be- 
cause he bore the ark of the covenant. He was making not his 
own fight, not merely the fight of his own country, or of the pass- 
ing generation. The stars in their courses had enlisted with him ; 
he had a treaty, never submitted to the Senate, which made him 
the ally of the Lord of Hosts, with infinite reinforcements at 
his call. The battle he was waging was not in the fallen timber 
about the old church at Shiloh; nor in the Wilderness of Vir- 
ginia; he contended not alone with an insurrection of the slave 
power; he was hand to hand with a rebellion ancient as selfish- 
ness and greed which in all centuries has denied the rights of 
man, made of human governments a pestilent succession of 
despotisms and turned the history of our race into a dull recital 
of crimes and failures and misfortunes. Thus he was caught up 
like Ezekiel, prophet of Israel, and brought to the East gate of 
the Lord's house; and when he heard it said unto him, "Son of 
Man, these are the men who devise mischief," he knew what 
the vision meant; for he understood better than any man who 
ever lived what this endless struggle of humanity is, and how far 
the nation of America had fallen away from its duty and its op- 
portunity. 

All his life there had dwelt in his recollection a little sentence 
from an historic document which had been carelessly passed along 



ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 239 

from one Fourth of July celebration to another, "All men are 
created equal." To him the words sounded like an answer to a 
question propounded by the oldest of the Hebrew sages, "If I 
despise the cause of my man servant, or my maid servant, when 
he contendeth with me, what shall I do when God riseth up ? Did 
not He that made me make him?" — a strategic question that had 
to be answered aright before democracy or any other form of 
civil liberty could make headway in the world. All men are 
created equal. He knew that the hand which wrote that sentence 
was guided by a wisdom somewhat higher than the front porch 
of a slave plantation in Virginia; that first principles overshadow 
time and place ; and that when men take their lives in their hands 
to lay the foundations of free nations, they must speak the truth 
lest the heavens fall. With a sublime faith, shared within the 
limits of their light by millions, he believed that sentence. He 
had tested the depth of it till his plummet touched the founda- 
tion of the earth. From his youth that simple saying had been 
ringing in his ears. "All men are created equal." It was the 
answer of the Eighteenth Century of Christ, to all the dim millen- 
niums that were before Him; yet he had heard it ridiculed, nar- 
rowed down to nothing and explained away. He understood the 
meaning of the words and came to their defence. 

Brushing away the wretched sophistries of partisan expediency, 
he rescued the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson from obloquy and 
contempt. "I think," he said, "that the authors of that notable 
instrument intended to include all men. But they did not in- 
tend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean 
to say that all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral develop- 
ment, or social capacity. They defined, with tolerable distinct- 
ness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal — 
equal, with certain inalienable rights among which are life, lib- 



240 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

erty and the pursuit of happiness. This they said and this they 
meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that 
all men were then actually enjoying that equality, nor that they 
were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had 
no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare 
the right, so that the enforcement of it should follow as fast as 
circumstances would permit. They meant to set up a standard 
maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and re- 
vered by all ; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even 
though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated; there- 
by constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augment- 
ing the value and happiness of life to all people, of all colors, 
everywhere." That was the message of Abraham Lincoln to the 
nations of America. And as if to make it certain, that it was 
no mere flourish of a joint debate, he turned aside on his trium- 
phal journey to the Capital, just before he took the oath of office, 
to repeat the sacred precepts of the Declaration in the hall at 
Philadelphia, where our fathers first spoke them, and to add his 
pledge to theirs that he would defend them with his life. 

Here is the summit, the spiritual height, from which he was 
able to forecast the doom of all tyrannies, the end of all slaveries, 
the unconditional surrender of all the strongholds of injustice and 
avarice and oppression; this is the mountain top from which he 
sent down these inspiring words of good cheer and hope: "This 
essentially is a people's contest; on the side of the Union, a strug- 
gle to maintain in the world that form and substance of gov- 
ernment, the leading object of which is to elevate the condition 
of men, to lift artificial weights from shoulders; to clear the path 
of laudable pursuit for all, and to afford all an unfettered start 
and a fair chance in the race of life." No American, North or 
South, regrets that this war for the Union ended as it did — "that 



ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 241 

we are not enemies, but friends." Nor can I help believing that 
the words which he has spoken here to-night have brought the 
President of the United States nearer to our brethren beyond the 
line, once so real, now happily so imaginary, which formerly di- 
vided and estranged our people. Thanks be unto God, we are one 
nation and even in our partisan traditions we share in the heritage 
of a common faith in the institutions founded by our fathers. As 
Democrats we repeat the words "equal rights to all and special 
privileges to none." As Republicans we answer, "an unfettered 
start and a fair chance in the race of life." The doctrine is the 
same, nor is the day as far off as some may think when the peo- 
ple, without regard to the divisions of their political opinions, 
shall treasure in thankful hearts, the blunt and fearless plat- 
form of Theodore Roosevelt, "A square deal for every man, no less, 
no more." The doctrine is the same, and if it is not true there 
is no foundation for institutions such as ours. But the doctrine 
is forever true, and by the memory of Abraham Lincoln the Re- 
publican party stands pledged to make it good, and to keep it good 
for all men and for all time to come. 



THE TWENTIETH 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1906 



Address of 
GEN. HORACE PORTER 



ADDRESS OF 

GENERAL HORACE PORTER 



Mr. President and Fellow Members of the Republican Club: 
Abraham Lincoln was of humble birth; he early had to struggle 
with the trials of misfortune and to learn the first lessons of life 
in the severe school of adversity. He came from that class which 
he always alluded to as the "plain people." He always possessed 
their confidence, he never lost his hold on their affections. He 
believed that the government was made for the people, and not 
the people for the government, and that true Republicanism was 
like a torch — the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the 
brighter it burns. 

If at the height of his power any one had sneered at him on ac- 
count of his humble origin, he might well have replied, like the 
Marshal of France, who was raised from the ranks to a dukedom, 
when he told the haughty nobles of Vienna, who boasted of their 
long lines of descent and refused to associate with him, "I am an 
ancestor; you are only descendants." 

Abraham Lincoln possessed in a remarkable degree that most 
uncommon of all virtues, common sense. With him there was no 
practising the arts of the demagogue, no posing for effect, no at- 
titudinizing in public, no mawkish sentimentality. There was 
none of that puppyism so often bred by power. There was none 



245 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of that dogmatism that Dr. Johnson said was only puppyism 
grown to maturity. 

While his mind was one great storehouse of facts and useful 
information, he laid no claim to any knowledge he did not pos- 
sess. He believed with Addison that pedantry in learning is like 
hypocrisy in religion, a form of knowledge without the power of it. 

While he was singularly adroit and patient in smoothing down 
the ruffled feathers of friends who did not understand him, or 
even of political opponents, he wasted no time upon the absolute 
recalcitrants. He never attempted to massage the back of a 
political porcupine. And, as he once said himself, he always found 
it was a losing game to try to shovel fleas across a barnyard. 

I have often thought how few there are to-day alive who knew 
Abraham Lincoln intimately, and had conversed with him. His 
immediate contemporaries have fallen like the leaves of autumn. 

I shall never forget, for it is a circumstance that is indelibly 
engraved upon my memory, the first day it was my privilege to 
look upon the features of that illustrious man. 

It was just forty-two years ago when General Grant came from 
the West with his staff, to receive the commission of Lieutenant- 
General, which gave him command of all the armies of the Re- 
public. He arrived, late in the evening, at the hotel, and, hear- 
ing that Mr. Lincoln was holding a reception in the White House, 
he and his staff went there quietly. Notwithstanding the years 
of co-operation of those two men and their extensive correspond- 
ence, Mr. Lincoln and General Grant had never met. As the gen- 
eral entered the reception room he was elbowed and jostled by the 
crowd. No one knew him. When he came into the Blue Room Mr. 
Lincoln's quick eye caught sight of him, recognized him by the 
portraits of him he had seen^ and, stepping forward, reached out 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 247 

his long, angular arm, seized the general by the hand, drew him 
close up to him and said to Mrs. Lincoln: "Why, here is General 
Grant. What a surprise! What a delight!" And there the two 
stood conversing. Their figures formed a striking contrast — Gen- 
eral Grant 5 feet 8 inches in height, standing with his head 
somewhat bowed, Lincoln towering above him, 6 feet 4 inches tall. 
That night Mr. Lincoln wore a dress suit with a turned down 
collar a couple of sizes too large, and a cravat carelessly tied. 
There was something awkward and angular in his movements, 
but nothing that bordered upon the grotesque. There they stood 
conversing intimately for some time. It was a strange sight to 
watch the first meeting of those two men, one in the cabinet, the 
other in the camp, into whose hands Providence had seemed to 
place for a time the destinies of the Republic. It was fortunate 
for the country that they co-operated as patriots, that they had 
souls too great for rivalry, hearts too noble for jealousy. Through- 
out that long and bitter struggle for the Nation's life they stood 
shoulder to shoulder like the men in the Grecian phalanx of old, 
locking their shields together against a common foe, and teach- 
ing the world it is time to abandon the path of ambition when it 
becomes so narrow that two cannot walk it abreast. 

Their acquaintance ripened into a genuine affection, and Mr. 
Lincoln three times came down to visit General Grant at his head- 
quarters at City Point when our armies were investing Richmond 
and Petersburg, and when he sat about the campfire on a camp 
chair, his legs crossed, or, rather, one of those long legs wrapped 
around the other, sweeping away with his large hand the smoke 
of the fire as it blew in his face, we listened to the words of wis- 
dom and eloquence that fell from his lips, and to the inimitable 
stories he told until those evenings in their pleasure rivalled the 
Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 



248 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



When he visited the camp just before the final movement be- 
gan — the Appomattox campaign — he stepped over with the Adju- 
tant-general to the telegraph operator's tent, to get the first sight 
of the dispatches he expected from Washington, There he saw 
on the floor three little kittens crawling about, and the great 
man sat down in a chair and picked them up tenderly, put them 
in his lap, stroked their fur and drew the skirts of his coat around 
them to keep them warm, and he said to the adjutant-general: 
"Here are three little motherless waifs ; I hope you will take good 
care of them." "Oh, yes," was the reply, "we will give them to 
the camp cook, and he will take care of them." "And will they 
get some good milk every day?" "Oh, yes," said the adjutant- 
general. And three times I saw the President go to that tent 
during his visit and pick up those little kittens, fondle them and 
take out his handkerchief and wipe their eyes as they lay in his 
lap purring their gratitude. It seemed a strange sight to us on 
the eve of a battle, when every one was thinking only of the sci- 
ence of destruction, to see those little creatures caressed by the 
hand that by a stroke of the pen had struck the shackles from four 
millions of bondsmen, that had signed the commission of every 
officer in that gallant army, from the General in Chief to the 
humblest lieutenant. It was a very trivial circumstance, but it 
showed more than greater acts the childlike simplicity that was 
mingled with the majestic grandeur of his nature. 

He came down to camp just after he had been renominated to 
the presidency. We were talking about how the Electoral Col- 
lege was composed, and he said: "Of all our colleges, the Elec- 
toral College is the only one where they choose their own mas- 
ters." 

And then, in speaking to General Butler about the historical 
fact that every place General Grant had ever taken had been held, 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 249 

never yielded up, Mr. Lincoln said: "When General Grant once 
gets possessed of a place he seems to hang on to it as if he had 
inherited it." 

There was an officer cleaning his sword at the campfire. Mr. 
Lincoln came up, looked at it, took it in his hand, and said : "That 
is a formidable weapon, but it don't look half as dangerous to me 
as once did a Kentucky bowie knife. One night I passed through 
the outskirts of Louisville when suddenly a man sprang from a 
dark alley and drew out a bowie knife. It looked three times 
as long as that sword, though I don't suppose it really was. He 
flourished it in front of me. It glistened in the moonlight, and 
for several minutes he seemed to try to see how near he could 
come to cutting off my nose without quite doing it. Finally he 
said: 'Can you lend me five dollars on that?' I never reached 
in my pocket for money as quick in the whole course of my life, 
and, handing him a bill, said : 'There's ten dollars, neighbor. Now 
put up your scythe.' " 

He arrived the next time a few days after the colored troops 
had been successful in making an assault, and remarked: "I am 
glad the black boys have done well. I must go out and see them." 
He rode out with General Grant and staff, and the word was 
passed along to the colored troops that the President was coming, 
and then the cry arose everywhere, "Thar's Massa Linkum," and 
"Ole Fader Abraham is a-comin'," and they shouted, cheered, 
laughed, got down on their knees and prayed, fondled his horse, 
and some rushed off to tell their comrades that they had even kissed 
the hem of his garment. Mr. Lincoln was very much affected; 
he had his hat off, the tears were in his eyes, and his voice was 
so choked with emotion that he could scarcely respond to the 
salutations. It was a memorable sight, to see the liberated paying 
their homage to the great liberator. He remarked on the way 



250 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

back to camp : "When we were enlisting the colored troops there 
was great opposition to it, but I said to some of my critics one 
day, 'Well, as long as we are trying to send every able-bodied 
man to the front to save this country, I guess we had all better 
be a little color blind.' " I can express my satisfaction with 
what they have accomplished down here something like an old- 
time abolitionist did upon another occasion in Illinois. He went 
to Chicago, and his friends took him to see Forrest play Othello. 
He didn't know it was a white man blacked up for the purpose, 
and after the play was over said: "Well, all sectional prejudice 
aside, and making due allowance for my partiality for the race, 
darn me if I don't think the nigger held his own with any 
on 'em." 

I will only mention one more of those stories, for it greatly 
amused us one night in camp. I had in my hand a grain of the 
powder manufactured for the big guns. It was as large as a wal- 
nut. He asked: "Is that a grain of powder? Well, it's larger 
than the powder we used to use down in Sangamon County. Be- 
fore the country newspapers were published the fellows mer- 
chandizing there used to avail of the time before the preacher 
arrived at the weekly prayer meetings to announce what goods 
they had received from the East. A man got up one night and 
said: 'Brethren, before the preacher gets here I want to say that 
I have just received a new invoice of sporting powder. The 
grains are so fine you can scarcely see them with the naked eye, 
and polished up so bright you can stand up and comb your hair 
in front of 'em just as if it was a looking glass.' There was a 
rival powder merchant in the congregation who was boiling over 
with rage to find his competitor getting so much cheap advertis- 
ing, who rose and said: 'Brethren, I hope you won't believe a 
durned word Brother Smith has told you about that powder. I 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 251 

have seen it myself. Every lump is as big as a lump of stove 
coal, and I pledge you my word that any one of you could put 
a barrel of that powder on your shoulder and march squar' 
through hell without any danger of an explosion.' " 

There are two names of presidents that will always be in- 
separably associated in our minds — Washington and Lincoln. But 
from the manner in which modern historians magnify trivial acts 
you would suppose one had spent his entire life in cutting down 
trees and the other in splitting them up into rails. There was one 
marked diiference between them — Washington could not tell a 
story; Lincoln always could. 

But he told them not for the anecdote, but to clinch a fact, to 
point a moral. 

Ah, it was that humor of his that was his safety valve. It 
lightened his mind and relieved it for the time from the great 
responsibilities that were weighing upon him. He could cut the 
sting from the keenest criticism with his wit, he could gild dis- 
appointment with a joke. He knew better than most men that 
in speech wit is to eloquence what in music melody is to harmony. 

But his mind was not always attuned to mirth; its chords 
were too often set to strains of sadness. There was the slaughter 
in the field, the depletion of the treasury, complications which 
arose. All these were so appalling that sometimes even the great 
soul of Lincoln seemed ready to melt. But just when the gloom 
was blackest he never, never took counsel of his fears. He al- 
ways had the courage of his convictions. He never had occasion 
to look to the past with regret, nor to the future with apprehen- 
sion. He had that sublime faith which is content to leave the 
efforts to man, the results to God. 

When hope seemed fading and courage failing, when he was 
surrounded on all sides by doubting Thomases, unbelieving Sad- 



252 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

ducees and discontented Catilines, as the Danes once destroyed 
the hearing of their war steeds in order that they might not be 
affrighted by the din of battle, so Abraham Lincoln turned a deaf 
ear to all doubts and despondency about him and exhibited an un- 
swerving, an unbounded faith in the justice of the cause and the 
integrity of the Union. 

His was the faith that could see in the storm cloud a bow of 
promise, that could hear in the discords of the present the har- 
monies of the future. 

Singular man ! He was a Hercules, not an Adonis. 

We learn little in this world from precept — much from ex- 
ample. Patterns are better followed than rules. 

For ages after the battle of Thermopylae every Greek school 
child was taught to recite each day the names of the three hundred 
heroes who fell in the defence of that Pass. It would be a crown- 
ing act of patriotism if every American school child could be 
taught each day to contemplate the exalted character and utter 
the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln. 

Singular man ! No one can pluck a single laurel from his brow, 
no one can lessen the measure of his fame. Marvellous man! 
In the annals of all history we fail to find another whose life 
had been so peaceful, whose nature so gentle, and yet who was 
called upon to marshal the hosts of an aroused people and for 
four long years to conduct a bloody, relentless, fratricidal war. 

In the annals of history we fail to find another whose edu- 
cation was that of the cabinet, not the camp, and yet who died a 
more heroic death. 

It has seldom fallen to the lot of man to strike the shackles 
from the limbs of bondmen and liberate a race. It has seldom 
fallen to the lot of man to die the death of an honored martyr, 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 253 

with his robes of office still about him, his heart at peace with 
his fellowmen, his soul at peace with his God, at the moment of 
the restoration of his country to peace within her borders, to peace 
with all the world. 

We did not bury him in a Roman Pantheon, in a domed St. 
Paul's, or in an historic Westminster Abbey. We gave him nobler 
sepulchre; we laid him to rest in the soil his efforts had saved. 
That tomb will forever be the Mecca of all patriotic American 
citizens. Future ages will pause to read the inscription on its 
portals, and the prayers and praises of a redeemed and regenerated 
people will rise from that grave as incense rises from holy places, 
pointing out even to the angels in heaven where rest the ashes of 
him who had reached the highest pinnacle of earthly glory and 
covered the earth with his renown. 

It is only now that Abraham Lincoln has receded from us far 
enough in history to enable us to see him in his true proportions. 

A celebrated sculptor in the fourteenth century in Florence 
was commanded to make a colossal statue, which was to surmount 
an historic cathedral. When it was placed at the base of the 
cathedral, the ropes arranged for hoisting it, and it was there un- 
veiled, the crowd jeered and hooted and criticised unmercifully the 
sculptor. It was all out of proportion; it was a failure. But 
soon the ropes began to tighten, and as the statue moved up into 
the air the crowd ceased to jeer, and finally, when it was placed 
upon the pinnacle at the proper focal distance as intended by 
the great sculptor, who created it, the sneers turned to plaudits, 
and the people then saw it in all the beauty of its true propor- 
tions. 

And so Abraham Lincoln has so far receded from us in his- 
tory that he is nov/ in the proper focal distance. We can now 



254 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

measure all his great qualities as they appear in their true beauty 
and symmetry. 

I am glad there is a movement on foot to purchase the farm 
upon which he was born. It is well that it should be redeemed 
from individual ownership. It should be made the repository of 
all the interesting relics connected with him. It ought to be the 
seat of a national museum and a national park. 

He is gone from us now, crowned with the sublimity of mar- 
tyrdom. We have bidden a last farewell to him who was the 
gentlest of all spirits, noblest of all hearts, liberator of a race, 
savior of a Republic, martyr, whose sepulchre is human hearts. 



THE TWENTY-FIRST 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1907 



Address of 



GEN. 0. 0. HOWARD 



OLIVER OTIS HOWARD 

General Howard was born in Leeds, Me., 1830. He 
graduated at Bowdoin College, 1850; West Point, 1854. 
Was a Lieutenant, U. S. A., and instructor in mathe- 
matics at West Point on the outbreak of the war. In 
May, 1861, he was commissioned a colonel of the Third 
Maine Regiment, and a major-general of volunteers in 
1862. He took part in many of the heaviest engage- 
ments of the war. From 1865-74, he was a commis- 
sioner of the Freedman's Bureau, took an important 
part in the work of Reconstruction, and in the Indian 
wars of the seventies. In 1864 he was made a brigadier- 
general, U. S. A., and in 1886, major-general, U. S. A. 
He retired in 1894. In 1895 he founded the Lincoln 
Memorial University (collegiate, normal and industrial 
school) at Cumberland Gap, Tenn. He is also known 
as an author and a lecturer of repute. He has re- 
ceived numerous honors for bravery, and is a Chevalier 
of the Legion of Honor. 



ADDRESS OF 

GENERAL O. O. HOWARD 



Fellow Republicans of the Republican Club of New York, Ladies 
and Gentlemen : I have been seeking for about a half an hour for 
a definition of the present Republican party. I asked General 
Porter, and he thinks it consists principally in the following of 
Abraham Lincoln. I have asked General Dodge, who himself is 
the epitome of Republicanism, and he says it is the party that is 
always in favor of patriotism and progress. 

I was thinking while I sat here what a fate it is that a man 
should be a substitute at all. I wasn't a substitute during the 
war. Some years ago I was a substitute at a New England din- 
ner for Mr. Carnegie in this city, and I remarked then: How is it 
possible for a man who has so little to represent a man who has 
so much? 

And now I want to say to you that it is very unfortunate to 
get so small a shotgun to represent a Cannon, but I am willing 
to make this substitution in the face of that beautiful remark 
of Speaker Cannon's just read to us, which is the very essence of 
Republicanism in this country. 

I began with the Republican party at its beginning. Of 
course, I was in the army then and have been now fifty-seven 
years, and expect to remain in the army until I die. But while 
in the army I have always contended. General Dodge, that a man 
has no right to forego his citizenship. So I say to you that 



258 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

I am very, very glad to be welcomed here by seventeen hundred 
young men who represent the Republicanism of New York. It is 
a hard place to be a Republican in, New York. I saw a lady the 
other day, and she said : "Up in Vermont I am an out-and-out Re- 
publican, but the moment I get to New York I am simply a Tam- 
many Democrat." 

When during the Civil War our public men were somewhat dis- 
couraged with reference to its outcome, more than at any other 
period, there had assembled quite early in the morning in Mr. 
Lincoln's office room a number of prominent men. Mr. Lincoln 
was sitting in his office chair with his right hand resting on the 
table in front of him when he heard a prominent Senator, with 
deep emotion, remark, "If we only could do right as a people, 
God would give us a victory." Mr. Lincoln instantly rose to his 
feet and cried, in that singularly shrill, piercing voice of his, 
"My faith is greater than yours!" As he stood there, head and 
shoulders above all of them, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet 
officials and army officers were gazing upon his shining face. 
Looking toward the first speaker he repeated, "My faith is greater 
than yours." The Senator said : "How is that, Mr. Lincoln ?" He 
answered: "God will make us do sufficiently right as a people to 
give us the victory." This answer is the gauge of Lincoln's faith, 
which never at any time was known to falter. 

There is something very close to faith which we are wont to 
call virtue — public virtue and private virtue — the old English of 
it is "Valor." 

In the first speech I ever saw of Mr. Lincoln's he said: "Many 
free countries have lost their liberties, and ours may lose hers, 
but if she shall, be it my proudest boast, not that I was the last 
to desert, but that I never, never deserted her." That was valor. 

Mr. Lincoln was fond of riding on horseback in the early even- 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 259 

ing to the Soldiers' Home. One night during the latter part of 
1863 he rode out with an orderly. When part way he sent the 
orderly back for something which he had left at the White House 
and rode on alone. After dusk he galloped up to the home stables, 
and the hostler noticed that he was without his hat. Mr. Lin- 
coln, answering the hostler's question, said: "Run back a few 
hundred yards and pick it up." The man had heard a shot, but 
thought little of it till Mr. Lincoln came galloping in. He found 
the hat and brought it to the President, who was still waiting 
at the stable. There was a bullet hole near the top. Mr. Lin- 
coln made the man promise not to speak of it. "It was probably 
an accident and might worry my family." And he went to the 
Soldiers' Home, as usual, but probably never again alone. A man 
had really undertaken to shoot him. 

You see in this incident, and in a great many others that you 
can recall, the simple, straightforward courage of the man. It 
never failed him. 

Now, there was another characteristic, and that was a uniform 
effort to obtain knowledge from his boyhood to his manhood, and, 
in fact, all through his manhood. If you will remember at one 
time when he was a lawyer he said, "I don't understand that word 
'demonstration' — demonstration — demonstration. Lawyers are al- 
ways talking about demonstration. I don't know what they 
mean by it." And somebody suggested it would be wise for him 
to take up Euclid, and he did so. He went through the whole of 
that large book, that old book of Euclid, and demonstrated every 
proposition in it, and when he got through he said: "Now I un- 
derstand what is meant by demonstration." 

That indicates to you a choice bit of the character of his mind 
in searching for the truth. He never was satisfied until he had 
completely mastered a subject that he had put his mind upon. 



26o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

At one time some of the officers in Washington rather slighted 
him. He would go to them for advice and sometimes get quite 
a rebuff. He made up his mind then that he would study strategy 
for himself, and he got the hardest books we had upon the sub- 
ject, and he mastered it, and that is why, if you read history 
carefully, you will find that he never made a mistake in the line 
of strategy, though he didn't profess to be a general. 

We have in the schedule of virtues the word temperance. I 
heard a story here to my right on the subject of Abraham Lin- 
coln's temperance, and somebody indicated that he had no small 
vices. After he was nominated to be President of the United 
States, a committee came down from Chicago to his home in Illi- 
nois and said to him: "You are nominated; you are nominated." 
He said: "I suppose I must treat." And he sent out and a man 
came in with a large tray, and on it were tumblers, and a pitcher 
in the middle filled with water — cold v/ater. "Oh," he said, "this 
is Adam's ale. We can ask for nothing better than that." And 
so he treated the committee, drank their health in good cold 
water. But you may say : "Did he overdo the matter ?" Well, no ; 
Mr. Lincoln was not temperate simply in eating and drinking; he 
was temperate in everything, and, what is more, he wouldn't do 
business with any man while he was in a passion. 

One day he saw Senator Fessenden, for example, coming toward 
his ofiice room. Mr. Fessenden had received the promise of some 
appointment in Maine for one of his constituents. The case had 
been overlooked. As soon as Mr. Lincoln caught sight of the Sena- 
tor he saw he was angry, and as Fessenden approached his door 
he called out: "Say, Fessenden, aren't you an Episcopalian?" Mr. 
Fessenden, taken aback by the question, answered : "Yes, I belong 
to that persuasion." Mr. Lincoln then said: "I thought so; you 
swear so much like Seward. Seward is an Episcopalian. But 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 261 

you ought to hear Stanton swear. He can beat you both. He 
is a Presbyterian." By this time Fessenden was in hearty good 
humor, and the President, sending for the papers, soon settled the 
case to the Senator's satisfaction. 

A like instance occurred when a poor father was beside himself 
pleading for the life of his son, who was to be shot the next day 
for desertion. Mr. Lincoln quieted him by a touching story, and 
then put the coveted pardon of his son into the father's hand. 

You notice he never ended any of those cases without pardon- 
ing the son. 

Now patience. I never saw in any of my intercourse with Mr. 
Lincoln, and I have met him a great many times, and General 
Dodge has seen more of him than I have, but I never knew, and 
I don't think Dodge can recall an occasion in which Lincoln 
showed the slightest impatience. Always patient! A poor wom- 
an came in who wanted her son pardoned. Her son had been 
sleeping on post. She pleaded her case, she pleaded it very well. 
The boy had been kept without sleep too long; he had undertaken 
to do duty for another young man the night before, and he had 
a second night, and he fell asleep on post, and he was tried by 
court-martial and sentenced to death. Mr. Lincoln heard the case 
very carefully and granted the petition. A little later a woman 
more advanced in age came in, and she wanted her brother out of 
the old Capitol Prison. He was put in there perhaps by Mr. Stan- 
ton for using disloyal language. In those days we used to clap 
them in prison sometimes for things that now they can say on 
the street. He heard the old lady's case with great care — prob- 
ably the man deserved to be put in the old Capitol, but he par- 
doned him and let him out. Then he went with her to the door, 
and just as he was about to part with her she said: '*0h, you 
don't know how grateful I am, Mr. Lincoln ; I don't know what I 



262 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

can say. I will say this, I hope I may meet you in Heaven." 
"Well," Mr. Lincoln said, "in the rough and tumble of this world, 
I don't know, I may never get to that beautiful place you speak 
of; I may never get there. But," he added, "I know this, it is 
the best wish you could make for me." And then he turned 
around as she went out, remarking: "Speed, it seldom happens to 
a man to be able to make two people happy in the same day." And 
then he said: "I hope it will be said of me when I am gone, by 
those who care for me, by those who love me most, that I never 
allowed an opportunity to pass where I could pluck a thistle and 
plant a flower where I thought a flower would grow." 

Now, there is another subject I approach with a good deal 
of delicacy, but I put it down, and you must pardon me for it. I 
don't believe much in religiousness, never did, but there is one 
word that I do not know any substitute for — the clergymen call 
it Godliness. Well, Abraham Lincoln had Godliness. 

General Sickles — I wish he were here to-night — told me over 
and over again in the first McKinley political campaign this story. 
He said : "After I was wounded I was carried to Washington after 
Gettysburg, and I was lying on the stretcher. People thought I 
would die. While I was there Mr. Lincoln, with his little boy 
Tad, came in to see me, and he began to talk to me, and I saw 
that he was a little too sympathetic to suit me, so I began to rally 
him, and then I said : 'Why, I understand your cabinet and your- 
self were trying to get out of Washington just before the battle 
of Gettysburg,' and Mr. Lincoln shook his head and said, 'No, we 
were not; no, we were not. We had to take some precautions,' 
he owned." General Sickles pressed him a little hard, and he said : 
"Well, Sickles, if you want to know what I was doing about that 
time I will tell you. There was one room in the White House 
where there was very little furniture, and I went in there and I 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 263 

shut the door, and I got down on my knees and said to the Lord, 
'You know I have done all I can. This is your struggle and I 
have done all I can!' And then I cried out with all my heart, 
*0h, God, give us a victory.' Then suddenly it occurred to me to 
say: 'Oh, that I might have some token by which I could be as- 
sured of a victory.' Then such a sweet spirit came over me, such 
an indescribable spirit that I was as assured of a victory before 
I heard the news, as I was after." 

There was one young man out in the West that Mr. Lincoln 
was very fond of. His father used to entertain him on those 
lawyers' tours, and he always said to the young man : "Whenever 
you see me, stretch out both hands." Mr. Lincoln remembered 
him. He became first a professor, then afterwards a president, I 
think it was of the University of Illinois, so called at that time, 
and Mr. Lincoln appointed him on the Board of Visitors sent to 
West Point, and he went there, and the boards knowing that 
Mr. Lincoln was his friend, made him president of the board, 
and after they got through with their work he went to Wash- 
ington and into the War Department to get some facts that were 
necessary to complete his report. "It occurred to me while there," 
he said, "that I would like to see Mr. Lincoln in that, the darkest 
period of the war, and I sat down and wrote him a short note: 
'Dear Mr. Lincoln, give me five minutes, please.' Mr. Lincoln 
folded the paper, turned it over and wrote on the back: 'I will give 
you an hour. A. Lincoln.' " And he went to Lincoln's office. 
When he came in Mr. Lincoln rose up to his full height, stretched 
out both hands to him and gave him a welcome and they sat down, 
and they communed together. Just before he went away he said : 
"Now, Mr. Lincoln, I want to ask you a question. I hardly dare 
do it, but if it isn't proper you needn't answer it, of course." Mr. 
Lincoln said : "Well, if I can't answer it I won't. Go ahead." He 



254 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

said : "Out in. Illinois they are very anxious about the termination 
of this conflict. Shall we succeed in this war?" He said that 
Mr. Lincoln changed color and became haggard, great tears ran 
down his face, and it was some time before he could speak at all, 
and then when he did he said: "President Mannes, we shall suc- 
ceed in this war, but I don't expect to live to see its termination 
or its consummation." "Now, Mr. Lincoln," said the other, "sim- 
ply just one more question: Would you be willing to tell me on 
what you base your opinion?" Then Mr. Lincoln began in that 
singular negative way of his: "I do not base it upon my con- 
stituency, though no man ever had any better constituency than 
we have, or more faithful ; I do not base it on my generals, though 
no king or potentate ever had better generals, abler men, ready 
and willing to sacrifice everything that they have for the good 
of the Republic ; I do not even base it on the boys in blue of the 
army and the navy — no, no; though no nation on earth ever had 
a better army than ours, ready to give everything, even life it- 
self, for the salvation of the Republic. No, no. I will tell you 
what I base it on — on the God of our fathers who hath brought 
this Nation hitherto and will never, never suffer this Nation to 
perish!" 

There is one other little item, brotherly kindness. I was taken 
very ill out on Meridian Hill. I was a little overworked and had 
a bilious turn, and for about three days I was very near the grave 
— delirious. After that, in about three days more, I was up and 
at work again. Well, during that time Mr. Lincoln came out to 
see me. First he came with Charlotte Cushman, whose name you 
have heard, to inquire about me. I have a very dim recollection 
of his coming. The next time he came with that same little boy 
who seemed to attend him always. Tad, whom he loved so much, 
and Tad walked with the sentinel, backwards and forwards, while 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 265 

his father went to see the doctor to see if he could find out any- 
thing about my case, and see if anything could be done for me, 
and Tad said to the sentinel: ''Is the Colonel very sick?" "Yes." 
"Awful sick?" "Yes." "Well," he says, "father thinks he is not 
going to live"; and I was then only a very common colonel among 
thousands of others. It was not only my camp that he visited 
and looked at my parade and congratulated me upon success, but 
the Twelfth New York and Burnside's regiments, and all the 
others around about. And think of the largeness of heart of 
the man who could so take us in and show us that personal ten- 
derness. Wasn't it brotherly kindness? 

He once came down to Brooks Station, and I saw him coming 
in through that bower that the Germans made for me, and he 
was too tall to come in. He took off that tall hat of his, that 
postoffice hat, and bowed his head as he came in, and he sat 
down upon my cot and admired my robe made of a South Amer- 
ican sheep, its construction and beauty. Then he saw the tablets 
upon the wall that the American Tract Society had given me, one 
for every day in the month, and that day was, "The lord is my 
Shepherd; I shall not want," and he and I looked at it together, 
and I am sure those words sunk into his heart as they did into 
mine. It was not long after that that I had some trouble and I 
came home greatly discouraged, and I looked up where Abraham 
Lincoln had looked and I said, "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall 
not want!" — why didn't I think of it before? 

And after Chancellorsville, when ambition sought my removal, 
they carried the case up to Mr. Lincoln and asked: "Wouldn't it 
be a wise thing to remove General Howard from the command of 
the Eleventh Corps? He hasn't succeeded very well." You all 
know that Stonewall Jackson in that battle was more to blame 
than I was. But Mr. Lincoln, after hearing them carefully, wind- 



266 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

ing one foot of his about twice around his leg, said: "Let him 
alone; let him alone; give him time and he will bring things 
straight." That is what kept me in the army. 

Most of you have read a little of the last interview that I had 
with Mr. Lincoln in Washington. I spent over an hour with him, 
and he called my special attention to what he called afterwards 
the "loyal refugees of Kentucky and of Tennessee and of Vir- 
ginia." Your president, when he introduced me, spoke of our 
Cumberland Gap Tennessee College. That is right in the centre 
of those three portions of Virginia, of Tennessee and of the Ken- 
tucky Mountains. Mr. Lincoln turned and looked in my eyes. I 
can never forget the expression. "Oh^ General," he said, "they 
are loyal there, they are loyal." And we have built up an insti- 
tution there to his name as a monument for the benefit of the 
boys and girls of the mountains. We have got 640 young men 
and young women, the brightest and best in the country. People 
call them "poor whites," sometimes "poor white trash." Then 
WE are trash. They are not trash. They are the very epitome 
of Americanism, and I do not think it is anything against them 
that they were always loyal to the flag. 

I was going through a car the other day, and there was an 
opera troupe coming from New York, going up to Canada, almost 
all young ladies — there were some gentlemen among them — and 
the moment I appeared, I don't know why, they cried: "Robert 
E. Lee! Robert E. Lee!" I said: "Oh, you are mistaken; I fought 
on the other side." Yes, I fought on the other side. We may 
be in the minority, but let us stick to it; let us stick to it till 
death. We don't want anything wrong; we don't want any spot 
on the escutcheon of the Republican party. We want purity and 
progress and we propose to have them; we will have them! 

There is only one more item and that is this: You will remem- 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 267 

ber the book, Winston Churchiirs work, in which he so beautifully 
represents the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He represents also 
his roughness. In that he is mistaken. Oh, how often I have 
compared notes with other men! There was no real roughness in 
Abraham Lincoln. A little homeliness — we are not all of us hand- 
some; we can't be. But here he took the beautiful Virginia, you 
remember, to the window of his room and looked forth down 
there to Alexandria and said: "When that star appeared there of 
the Confederacy, and I saw that flag, oh, how it oifended me, and 
I was worrying. Then I thought it was necessary I should suffer 
for the Republic"; and in conclusion he used these words to her: 
"I have not suffered BY the South— I have suffered WITH the 
South. Your sorrow has been my sorrow, and your pain has been 
my pain. What you have lost I have lost, and what you have 
gained," he added, sublimely, "I have gained." 

Just think of the sermon of it! The minister who sits here 
would say: Add to that faith, virtue; to virtue, temperance; to 
temperance, Godliness; to Godliness, brotherly kindness, and to 
brotherly kindness, charity. A man who could rise right up 
and show such love to God and love to his fellow man, even to his 
enemy, cannot readily be pointed out to-day. 



THE TWENTY-FIRST 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1907 



Address of 
GEN. JAMES H. WILSON 



JAMES HARRISON WILSON, LL.D. 

General Wilson was born in Shawneetown, 111., in 
1837. He was educated at McZendree College and at 
West Point (graduated i860). At the outbreak of the 
war he was serving in the engineering corps Department 
of Oregon. He was made Lieutenant- Colonel of Volun- 
teers, 1862; Captain U. S. Engineers and Brigadier- 
General of Volunteers, 1863. In 1866 he was brevetted 
Major-General U. S. A., "for gallant and meritorious 
services during the war." He was one of the most dis- 
tinguished engineering ofiScers on the Union side during 
the Civil War, winning special fame in the Vicksburg 
and Chattanooga campaigns. After voluntarily resign- 
ing from the army in 1870, he was connected with many 
important engineering works at home and abroad. He 
served with distinction in the volunteer army in the 
Spanish- American War; commanded the American 
forces in the China Relief Expedition, and represented 
the U. S. A. at the coronation of Edward VII. He is 
the author of numerous works of military biography. 



I 



I 



ADDRESS OF 

GENERAL JAMES H. WILSON 



Mr. Chairman, ladies and Gentlemen: I hardly know why I 
should be called upon to address the Republican Club upon an oc- 
casion of this sort, especially in reference to Abraham Lincoln, 
unless it be because Abraham Lincoln and my father were cap- 
tains together in the Black Hawk War. 

Abraham Lincoln's company, I believe, all deserted. Captain 
Harrison Wilson's company contained all the brigadier and major 
generals. They all remained in the war, and one of them sur- 
vived to become a major-general in the War of the Rebellion. It 
was my good fortune many years afterwards to be called to a 
bureau office in the War Department during the days of the g^eat 
Rebellion. I had hardly arrived in the capital city when I re- 
ceived an invitation to dinner at the White House, and it was 
my good fortune to partake of its hospitality frequently there- 
after. 

I was doubtful as to whether or not the President had mistaken 
me for some one else, but he assured me in a way that was quite 
acceptable that he had made no mistake. In addition to dining 
several times with him en famille, I went to the theatre with him, 
and upon these occasions he resorted to his well-known methods 
of entertainment, which were most acceptable to me. It so hap- 
pened that just about that time one of his youngest brigadier- 
generals had been captured up in the Valley of Virginia with sev- 



272 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

eral hundred mules. He said to me: "Oh, no, General, I don't 
care about the brigadiers; I can make them; but I have to buy 
mules, and they cost money." 

Well, now, he did make brigadier-generals, and one of the most 
pathetic of all the stories with reference to his power of manu- 
facturing brigadiers I am reminded of this evening by a remark 
of my preceptor and friend, General Howard, in regard to Maine. 
The great statesmen of that State sent down to Washington, with 
letters of commendation, a young man of whom they thought well. 
They did not ask to have him made a high officer, but they asked 
that he might be appointed to the position of second lieutenant 
of artillery in the regular army. Mr. Lincoln received him with 
kindness. His credentials came from William Pitt Fessenden 
and Hannibal Hamlin, and they were sufficient to make him an 
Ambassador to England. But he wanted simply to be a second 
lieutenant. Mr. Lincoln gave him a note to the Secretary of War, 
asking that this appointment might be made, and after an hour 
or so his young friend came back looking very much dejected. 
"What is the matter, Jamison ?" asked Mr. Lincoln. "Mr. Stanton 
says he won't do it." "Well, I guess if Stanton said he wouldn't 
he won't. You know Stanton takes the regular army under his 
protection, and I haven't much influence with him in regard to 
that branch of the service ; but I'll tell you what I will do, Jami- 
son, I will make you a brigadier-general of volunteers." And he 
made him a brigadier-general of volunteers, and fortunately it 
turned out that he was a good one. When you think about it, 
what the country had done for Lincoln in compelling him to make 
major-generals, you will perhaps think better of his exercising 
the appointing power. You will remember he had a "Young 
Napoleon" on his hands; he had "Old Rosy" on his hands; he had 
curled darlings of my lady's chamber on his hands; he had Roman 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL JAMES H. WILSON 273 

pro-consuls on his hands; he had every sort and condition of 
major-generals, and on the top of them he had "Fighting Joe." 
Well, if you will now take a glance at the history of the past 
you will see that he might well have doubted the predilections of 
his countrymen and turned in to make a few brigadiers on his 
own account. The subject is one that might be dwelt upon until 
the "wee sma' hours," but I shall pass on to another subject. 

It so happened that Mr. Lincoln lived during his earlier days at 
New Salem, a little village six miles north and a little easterly 
from Springfield, on the banks of the Sangamon. Before leaving 
there he had consented to become a candidate for the legislature. 
The nominating conventions in those days were held on Saturday. 
The first business in order was to dispose of the neighborhood 
fights. The Cleary's Grove gang were desperate men, and before 
the convention was called to order a fight took place between one 
of the gang and one of Mr. Lincoln's friends. You will all re- 
member that Mr. Lincoln was six feet four. Pushing through the 
crowd that surrounded the combatants, he grasped his friend's 
opponent by the back of the neck and the slack of the trousers 
and threw him outside of the limits of the ring. He then stepped 
upon the platform, which in those days was always a stump, and 
this is the speech that tradition credits him with: 

"Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I am plain Abe Lincoln. I have 
consented to become a candidate for the legislature. My political 
principles are like the old woman's dance — short and sweet. I be- 
lieve in a United States bank; I believe in a protective tariff; I 
believe in a system of internal improvements, and I am for free- 
dom for every human creature. If on that platform you can give 
me your suffrages I shall be much obliged. If not, no harm 
done, and I remain, respectfully yours, Abe Lincoln." 

Now, I call your attention to the fact that that speech was 



274 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

delivered seventy-five years ago, and that it carried in its bosom 
the four cardinal questions of American politics, the four car- 
dinal principles of the Kepublican party, which was born twenty- 
five years thereafter. Those fundamental principles remained in 
the platform of the Kepublican party till the end of the war. 
There was no surplusage, not a word too many in that speech. 
It contained a faith as broad as the great Republic. It showed 
the primal man, and that no pent-up XJtica confined his powers. 
And you members of the Republican Club of New York may well 
pause to consider whether Republicanism as it is to-day has not 
passed beyond those limits. Imagine Abraham Lincoln here to- 
day. What would he say with reference to the doctrines of the 
Republican party as they are now promulgated and practiced? 
Would he not be like that Pennsylvania Dutchman who, having 
become prosperous, v/ent down to Philadelphia to get a portrait 
of his father painted? He called upon the most distinguished 
artist in the city and said : "I vish to haf a portrait of mein fader 
painted." "Well," says the artist, "send your father down and I 
will make a sketch of him and paint his portrait." "But mein 
fader is dead." "Send me down a photograph and I will see if 
I cannot reproduce his likeness." "But I haf no photograph." 
"Oh, well, then, describe your father to me." "Well, mein fader 
was a big man; he had broad shoulders and a high chest; he had 
high cheek bones and blue eyes, and a stout chin and a big beard." 
"All right, my friend; I will see what I can do for you." And 
after a few weeks he sent word back to the countryman that 
the portrait was ready and to come down with his family and look 
it over. So they came down, were ushered into the studio, the 
covering was thrown off, and there was the stout figure. The 
farmer looked at it for a moment, and then said: "Yes, dat is 



ADDRESS OF GENERAL JAMES H. WILSON 275 

mein fader that I loved; that is mein venerated fader vat is 
dead; but, mein Gott! how he has changed!" 

Now, I am not undertaking to sketch Mr. Lincoln, but of one 
thing you may be assured — his Republicanism was of the orthodox 
character, and we may believe that if he had lived to guide us the 
change in party practice at least would not have been so great. 

Mr. Lincoln was somewhat of a strategist, as General Howard 
has told us. You will recall when Lee began thundering north- 
ward from the Rappahannock and Fighting Joe with his army 
was on the north side of that stream he wrote a letter to Mr. 
Lincoln, saying that he thought he would throw his army across 
the river to the south and take Lee in flank. Mr. Lincoln wrote 
back to him: "I note your proposition, and under the right cir- 
cumstances it would be proper, but if I were in your place I do 
not think I would do it, for with your army half across the 
river, Lee would surely turn upon you and then you would find 
yourself like the bull half jumped over the fence — unable either 
to gore to the front or kick to the rear." 

Mr. Lincoln was also a great politician. He was surrounded 
and strengthened by great men, some of whom opposed him and 
some of whom assisted him. Amongst those who were most influ- 
ential in shaping his destiny was his great rival, Stephen A. 
Douglas. You will all recall how in that wonderful joint debate 
Mr. Lincoln gave utterance to his thought about the house di- 
vided against itself which could not stand. His friends thought 
it was a false movement on his part. Judge Douglas took every 
advantage of it, but in the end "the house divided against itself" 
made Lincoln President of the United States, but it did more. 
The joint debate made Stephen A. Douglas his friend, and Stephen 
A. Douglas, after having put himself back of the great cause 
for which Mr. Lincoln stood, came to be the one man who brought 



276 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

more Northern Democrats into the United States Army and into 
the fold of the Republican party than all the other Democratic 
statesmen put together. 

Mr. Lincoln, however, had another great assistant, the greatest 
of all those who stood with him in the terrible days. I mean 
Edwin M. Stanton. 

It was my good fortune to know him as well as to know Mr. 
Lincoln, and in a small way it was my good fortune to see the 
greatness of the man, for whenever I went to him with requisi- 
tions to furnish forth the army, he said : "Give it to them, though 
it take the last dollar in the Treasury, then they cannot say we 
did not support them." Short and stout, strong, virtuous and 
aggressive, in my humble judgment he more than any other man 
put the force into the administration which made it victorious. 

Philosophy teaches us that mankind have risen to their high 
estate by the exercise of two faculties, reason and the power of 
co-operation. With such men as Stanton to support the Presi- 
dent, the combination between reason and strength in that ad- 
ministration was perfect. And another illustration of the 
strength of combination is found in the history of his strongest, 
most victorious, most successful general. I refer to Ulysses S. 
Grant, than whom no more modest, no more manly, no more con- 
stant, no more aggressive general ever lived. But he, too, was 
supported by a combination. His Pidus Achates, his right arm, 
his strong, aggressive and ever vigilant supporter was John A. 
Rawlins, a man who, when twenty-three years of age, was burning 
charcoal for a living. He was a Douglas Democrat, and he stood 
by General Grant and "stayed him from falling" until he was 
victorious, as Stanton stood by Abraham Lincoln until the whole 
country was victorious. 



THE TWENTY-SECOND 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

EEPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 
City of New York 
FEBRUARY 12, 1908 



Address of 
HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 



i 



MORRIS SHEPPARD 

Congressman Sheppard was born in Wheatville, Morris 
Co., Texas, 1875. He graduated from the University of 
Texas, 1895 and 1897, and from the Yale Law School, 
1898. He was admitted to the Bar in 1897. Since 
October, 1902, he has been Member of Congress (Demo- 
crat) for the First Texas District. 



i 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 



Mr. President, Ladies, and- Gentlemen of the Republican Club: 
On the wall of a Southern home there is to-day a letter in a frame, 
a letter which reads: "Executive Mansion, Washington, Feb. 10, 
1865. Hon. A. H. Stephens: According to your agreement, your 
nephew. Lieutenant Stephens, goes to you bearing this note. 
Please in return to select and send me that officer of the same 
rank, imprisoned at Richmond, whose physical condition most 
urgently requires his release. Respectfully, A. Lincoln." In a 
corner of the frame is a photograph of Lincoln bearing his signa- 
ture in his own handwriting. At the close of the Hampton Roads 
Conference early in 1865 Lincoln had asked Alexander Stephens, 
the Vice-President of the Confederacy and one of the Southern 
Commissioners, if he could do anything for him personally. 
"Nothing," said Stephens, "unless you can send me my nephew who 
has been a prisoner on Johnson's Island for twenty months." "I 
shall be glad to do it; let me have his name," was the prompt 
reply. A few days later Lieutenant Stephens left for Richmond, 
where the exchange was effected, bearing the letter and the picture 
before described, both the gifts of Lincoln, and for more than 
forty years they have remained the chief treasures of a Dixie fire- 
side. This incident was but one of a host of others, showing in 
Lincoln a spirit that poised on wings of light above the wrath 
and gloom of war. 



28o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

But for other and wider reasons it is proper that the portrait of 
Lincoln should adorn this Southern home. He was born of South- 
ern parentage on Kentucky soil. His father was a Virginian ; his 
grandfather was a Virginian, his mother was a Virginian. His 
mother ! The very word hallows the lips that utter it. The world 
has not yet grasped its debt to the mothers of mankind. The 
mother is the luster and the hope of history. She is the central 
figure of all human sacrifice. Life is the flower of her agony, the 
fruitage of her pain. Humanity is cradled in her tears. That 
men may be, she fronts the grave, yes, at each birth endures a 
living crucifixion. 

Lincoln's mother possessed in marvelous measure the qualities 
that make maternity sacred. He never forgot her prayers, prayers 
that made the cabin in the wilderness a temple grander than St. 
Peter's or Cologne. His father, always in deepest poverty, had 
but recently removed from Kentucky largely because the spread 
of slavery and the aristocracy surrounding it tended to degrade 
the status of the whites who were compelled to labor with their 
hands. Thus in his earliest years were permanently impressed on 
Lincoln's soul the ideas of liberty, equality and personal rectitude 
which led him later to acclaim that day the happiest in history 
when there should be neither slave nor drunkard in the world. 
Such was his mother's influence that he afterwards ascribed to her 
all that he was or hoped to be. The clumsy, hand-hewn coffin 
in which she was interred, the lack of ceremony due to the fact 
that few ministers visited that remote vicinity, the lonely grave 
in the clearing, deepened the sadness that solitude and hardship 
had implanted in his nature. He did not rest until several 
months afterwards he knelt in the snow while a wandering 
preacher, summoned at his earnest instance, delivered a funeral 
sermon over her grave. It should be said here that the devoted 



ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 281 

woman, a native of Kentucky, who succeeded Lincoln's mother in 
the Lincoln home, recognized at once his unusual capacities and 
employed every means to encourage and develop them. To her 
he gave a love and reverence that were reflected in his spotless 
conduct. The teachings of these two women gave gentleness and 
grace to all his acts and must have prompted deed after deed of 
mercy in the memorable conflict with which his name is forever 
associated. 

"When Lincoln in 1832 announced his candidacy for the Illi- 
nois legislature he stated that his supreme purpose was to win the 
esteem of his fellow-men by being worthy of it. Thus at the age 
of 23 he proclaimed the basic impulse of his career, the ambi- 
tion to be useful to mankind. This impulse was but prophetic of 
the principle of brotherhood that was to mark the consummation 
of his efforts and to signalize his relation to history. Probably 
no other man of commanding fame ever struggled so effectively 
against so unpromising an environment. The family had removed 
from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indiana to Illinois, following the 
frontier's westward sweep, locating in secluded forests, felling 
trees with which to construct the crudest shelter and opening land 
for cultivation. In the labors of the farm and woods young Lin- 
coln shared to the fullest degree. The ordinary facilities of the 
most rudimentary education were beyond his reach. His entire 
schooling did not comprise twelve months. Yet he managed to 
obtain and study with absorbing eagerness Bunyan, ^sop, Weems' 
Washington and the Bible. Perhaps ^sop inspired his celebrated 
habit of reinforcing argument with parable and anecdote. With 
what prophetic interest must he have followed the trials of Wash- 
ington and the patriot armies in founding the nation he was to 
be summoned to preserve. He seems to have been especially im- 
pressed with Washington's unvarying trust in God, a sentiment he 



282 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

approved and emulated. In the Bible, of which he was a con- 
stant student, he found the doctrine that supplied the definition of 
his existence, the doctrine embodied in Christ's answer to the law- 
yer in the temple, the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man, the doctrine that Lincoln considered of it- 
self sufficient to form the basis of a church, the doctrine his life 
proclaimed and his death ennobled, the doctrine of which the Amer- 
ican Declaration of Independence is but another form, the doc- 
trine on which rests all liberty and progress. Such were the mate- 
rials with which this youthful Vulcan hammered his being into 
heroic mould and purpose. In that stern pioneer age labor of 
severest form was honor's essence, equality was the natural state, 
and men were loved for what they could contribute to the general 
good. In such a school Lincoln learned to revere humanity, truth 
and God. In such a school he developed a gentle soul, a giant 
stature and an iron will. His was a universal sympathy with all 
human aspiration. Hate found no lodgment in his heart; there 
kindness and mercy, like twin Portias, pleaded always against the 
pound of flesh. 

These elements were slowly fusing in the fires of experience 
and ambition, of conflicts, defeats, successes, for almost thirty 
years from the date of his first announcement for office. His 
single term in Congress was marked by faithful service and several 
comprehensive speeches. It was during his term in Congress that 
he wrote a letter to his young law partner containing certain 
rules of conduct which every young man ought to engrave upon 
his heart, a statement comprising a sounder and more healthful 
philosophy than any similar number of words in all literature, a 
statement breathing brotherhood in every line: "The way for a 
young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never 
suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to as- 



ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 283 



sure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in 
any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to 
keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows 
his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the at- 
tempted injury." In a speech a few years before, he had expressed 
another phase of his love of humanity in this sentence: "If you 
would win a man to your cause first convince him that you are his 
sincere friend." There is a verse from Aleyn which elaborates 
this beautiful idea, an idea so illuminative of Lincoln's soul : 

"The fine and noble way to kill a foe 
Is not to kill him ; you with kindness may 
So change him that he shall cease to be so ; 
And then he's slain. Sigismund used to say 
His pardons put his foes to death; for when 
He mortify'd their hate he killed them then." 

In his speech before the convention which nominated him for 
the United States Senate in opposition to Douglas, in the de- 
bates with that master of the forum, in inaugural addresses and 
presidential messages, on the field of Gettysburg and elsewhere, 
Lincoln gave deliverances that in chaste and lofty eloquence, in 
simplicity and power stand unsurpassed. The ideal of human 
brotherhood was with him ever uppermost. Toward the South he 
exhibited the most tolerant and affectionate spirit. In his speech 
at Peoria in 1854 he said: "Before proceeding let me say I think 
I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just 
what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist 
among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist 
among us we should not instantly give it up. When Southern 
people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery 



284 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

than we, I acknowledge the fact." The keynote of his position 
was opposition to the extension of slavery. 

The opening of the American Civil War made him the chief 
figure of the most colossal crisis in his country's life. Every ele- 
ment of his character was hrought into instant and effective play. 
It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the task he met and 
mastered. His was the responsible supervision of all civil and 
military administration. The young party he had led to victory 
was naturally filled with numerous and discordant groups all 
clamorous for recognition. Every phase of feeling as to the policy 
of the government in its most frightful emergency poured a stream 
of argument and protest across his audience chamber. To har- 
monize the clashing sentiments and interests required superbest 
skill. Relations with other nations demanded the coolest and most 
thorough judgment. He rewrote Seward's dispatch on the sub- 
ject of England's recognition of Southern belligerency, convert- 
ing that violent document, which would most probably have in- 
cited war, into a model of diplomatic propriety. The selection 
of commanders for the untried millions who assembled at his call 
involved the rarest penetration. Forbearance, sympathy and keen- 
est insight marked his treatment of the generals in the field. He 
studied the art of war and demonstrated military talent of the 
highest type. His orders and inquiries showed a technical famil- 
iarity with all the problems of the contest. He grasped the essen- 
tial features of the proper handling of the Union arms and re- 
sources. From the beginning he foreshadowed the course of the 
strife with such accuracy that competent authorities have pro- 
nounced him one of the ablest strategists of that world-astounding 
war. Throughout the changing fortunes of the conflict he was 
the same serene, unyielding, all-compelling force that welded 
every controversy and every defeat into final and overwhelming 



ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 285 

triumph. The fires of criticism and calumny found him unresent- 
ing, calm, yet undeterred. Modest himself to the point of self- 
effacement, he held himself the humblest of all the Presidents. 
On his second election to the Presidency he said there was in his 
gratitude to the people no taint of personal triumph and that he 
felt no pleasure in succeeding over others. He exercised the pre- 
rogative of pardon with tenderness and enthusiasm. Mighty as 
was his brain, still mightier was his heart. He had begun a hu- 
mane and peaceful reconstruction of several States before he died, 
and had he lived, the nation's wounds, which he felt were also his, 
would have far more quickly healed. The knowledge that de- 
spite his love for all mankind his efforts for human elevation would 
be distorted and assailed, that however glorious the final victory 
thousands of American homes were being desolated, that brother 
was emptying the blood of brother, and the premonition that he 
would not outlive the struggle, wrapped him in isolation and in 
sorrow and gave his features an infinite sadness in repose. 

His death was one of the profoundest calamities that ever 
shocked the earth. To his noble wife he remarked as the clandes- 
tine assassin was about to fire, "There is no city I desire so much 
to see as Jerusalem." He was not permitted to see the old Jerusa- 
lem, but in a few hours he was to stand among the glories of the 
new. Now what is the relation of his life to the Republic he 
aided so materially to preserve? It is the development of the 
idea of brotherhood on which the continued preservation of this 
Union depends. What lesson emanates from his spectral figure 
as it rises from that April night in 1865? It is the love of 
Abraham Lincoln for every man, woman and child beneath the 
American flag. Invoking his memory I, a Southerner and a Demo- 
crat, true to every principle that animates my patriotic, valorous 
and incorruptible people, come among you to-night, Northerners 



286 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

and Republicans, equally true to your convictions, as fellow-coun- 
tryman, friend and brother. New York is my country as well as 
Texas. Massachusetts, California, Illinois are as dear to me as 
Louisiana, Georgia or Tennessee. The memory of Abraham Lin- 
coln is one of the fundamental buttresses of the reunited and un- 
conquerable America of the twentieth century. In fulfillment of 
his desires and dreams the American people are to-day a mighty 
and a deathless brotherhood. Forgotten are the discords of the 
past; departed are the specters of civil strife. Near Columbus, 
Ohio, was situated Camp Chase, one of the military prisons of the 
North during the Civil War. There thousands of Southern sol- 
diers died, far from the land of their birth and love. But their 
graves have received the tenderest care from Northern hearts and 
hands, and an arch has been erected on that solemn spot bearing 
the word "Americans." This word expresses the spirit of pa- 
triotism that to-day uplifts and thrills the nation, the spirit in 
which Lincoln moved and spoke and prayed. It hallows the 
past, it inspires the present, and 0, may it animate the endless 
reaches of the future ! It arouses love for every part of our com- 
mon country, for every city and every state, every mountain and 
every shore, every forest and every plain — love for our traditions 
and our history, love for the home of freedom, the hope of lib- 
erty, the light of time, the radiance of the ages, our own United 
States. 

The poet sings of Sunny France, 
Fair olive-laden Spain, 
The Grecian Isles, Italia's smiles, 
And India's torrid flame. 
Of Egypt's countless ages old, 
Dark Afric's palms and dates ; 
Let me acclaim the land I name. 
My own United States. 



ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 287 

The poet sings of Switzerland, 
Braw Scotland's heathered moor, 
The shimmering sheen of Ireland's green, 
Old England's rockbound shore, 
Quaint Holland and the fatherland, 
Their charms in verse relates, 
Let me acclaim the land I name, 
My own United States. 

I love every inch of her prairie land, 
Each stone on her mountains' side, 
I love every drop of the water clear 
That flows in her rivers wide ; 
I love every tree, every blade of grass. 
Within Columbia's gates. 
The queen of the earth is the land of my birth, 
My own United States. 



I 



I 



I 



THE TWENTY-SECOND 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1908 



Address of 
HON. CHARLES E. HUGHES 



CHARLES EVANS HUGHES, A.M., LL.D. 

Governor Hughes was born in Glens Falls, N. Y., 1862. 
He graduated from Brown University, 1881, and from the 
Columbia Law School, 1884. From 1884-91 he prac- 
tised law in New York City; from 189 1-3 was Pro- 
fessor of Law at the Cornell University School of Law, 
afterwards returning to active practice. He first came 
into national prominence as attorney for the Armstrong 
Commission of the New York Legislature for the in- 
vestigation of insurance company methods. In 1906 he 
was elected Governor of the State of New York, and 
upon the expiration of his term was re-elected. 



ADDRESS OF 

GOVERNOR HUGHES 



Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Republican Club and Ladies: 
The exigencies of the gubernatorial office have not given me oppor- 
tunity to prepare any address which would be worthy of the 
traditions of this anniversary, and I appear before you without 
any set speech. I am very glad indeed of the opportunity of wel- 
coming to the State of New York the Governor of our sister state, 
Kentucky; and I envy you the pleasure that you will have in lis- 
tening to those who will adequately present the memories of this 
occasion. But, my friends, from a boy I have been full of Lincoln. 
There is no day in the year that is so eloquent to me as the day in 
which we commemorate his birth. 

It is true that on that day of all days when we celebrate the 
Declaration of Independence the American heart is warm with 
the sentiments of liberty and of free opportunity and of hearty rec- 
ognition of equality. It is also true that on the day when we 
celebrate the birth of the Father of his Country we render loyal 
tribute to the distinguished services of a man who, against odds 
which we can little appreciate, battled for the independence which 
was so nobly declared ; and v/e feel richer in our manhood because 
we were introduced to the family of nations by one who so worth- 
ily represented the best that humanity has offered. 

But there is one man who presents to the American people 
above all others in his many-sided greatness the type, the repre- 



aga THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

sentative of those qualities v/hich distinguish American character 
and make possible the maintenance of our national strength. And 
in Abraham Lincoln we recognize not simply one who gave his life 
for his country and rendered the most important service that any 
man could render in the preservation of the "Union, but one who 
seemed to have centered in himself those many attributes which 
we recognize as the sources of our national power. He is, par ex- 
cellence, the true American, Abraham Lincoln. 

I wish in our colleges and wherever young men are trained, 
particularly for political life, that there could be a course in Lin- 
coln. I wish our young men could be taken through the long 
efforts of his career; I wish they could become more intimately ac- 
quainted with the addresses he delivered; I wish that they could 
get in closer touch with that remarkable personality; and they 
would never find it possible to take a low or sordid view of 
American opportunity. 

Abraham Lincoln was an acute man. But we erect no monu- 
ments to shrewdness. We have no memorials by which we desire 
to perpetuate the records of American smartness. Skill in manipu- 
lation, acuteness in dealing for selfish purposes, may win their tem- 
porary victories, but the acuteness that the American people ad- 
mire is that acuteness which is devoted to the solution of problems 
affecting their prosperity and directly related to their interests, 
and which is employed unselfishly and for the benefit of the peo- 
ple, apart from any individual interest. 

I have long been a student of Lincoln. I have marveled at the 
ability which he displayed. There has been no greater exponent 
of that sharpness of intellect which so pre-eminently characterizes 
the American. But Abraham Lincoln devoted all his talents, 
his extraordinary perspicacity to the welfare of the people. He 
was a man of principle. He was a man all of whose acts were 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR HUGHES 293 

founded upon a recognition of the fundamental principles which 
underlie our Republic. Said he on one occasion, "I have no senti- 
ments except those which I have derived from a study of the 
Declaration of Independence." He was profoundly an apostle of 
liberty. I have said that he was a man of principle. Rarely has 
the doctrine of the relation to the nation, to the states, and of gov- 
ernment to the individual been more lucidly expounded than he 
expounded it in those sentences which probably are familiar to 
you all. He said, "The nation must control whatever concerns 
the nation. The states, or any minor political community, must 
control whatever exclusively concerns it. That is real popular 
sovereignty." And in that he said it all. 

He was an expert logician. He brought to bear upon his oppo- 
nents the batteries of remorseless logic. He had a profound confi- 
dence in the reasoning judgment of the American people. He dis- 
dained all efforts to capture the populace by other means. There 
is nothing more illuminating than his conduct of that great cam- 
paign against Douglas in 1858. He developed his line of attack 
in a question. He brought to bear upon his opponent an extra- 
ordinary ability of analysis. He eviscerated the subject of dis- 
cussion and he presented the whole matter that was then before 
the great American nation in its bare bones on a perfectly cool 
and logical consideration ; and, whUe he lost the campaign for the 
senatorship, he made himself the apostle of thinking America in 
its opposition to the extension of slavery. He had one foundation 
principle, and that was this: ''Slavery," he said, "is wrong. It 
may be recognized where it constitutionally exists, but shall it be 
extended?" And to every proposition that was presented by his 
skilful and adroit opponent he presented not abuse, not any appeal 
to the emotions of the multitude, but cogent reasoning, from which 
none could escape, and while he lost the senatorship, he appeared 



294 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

before the American people as representing their ideal of straight- 
forward, honest representation of the truth applicable to their 
crisis, and received the highest honors within their gift. 

There never has been an illustration, I venture to say, within 
the memory of man where intellect has exerted so potent a mag- 
netism, where loyalty has been commended simply because reason 
and early training; and therein there is no man who walks in any 
station of life in any part of the country but can call Lincoln 
his brother, his friend, a man of like passions and like experiences 
with himself. We recognize some men for the services that they 
have rendered. They have deserved well of their country. We 
recognize Lincoln for his service. No one has deserved better of 
his country. He rendered a service which cannot be eulogized 
in extravagant terms; but we forget anything that Lincoln ever 
did or anything that Lincoln ever said in the recognition of the 
great manhood that was his, which transcended anything he did 
because of what he was. I have said that he was a man of prin- 
ciple; and so he was. But he was a progressive man; he was 
sensitive to the demands of his day. Three or four years — three 
years, I believe it was, after the outbreak of the war he said, "I 
have not controlled events, and I confess events have controlled 
me, and after three years we find ourselves in a situation which 
neither party and no man devised or expected." He was a man 
who met each demand as it arose — to the radicals he was too 
conservative; to the conservatives he was too radical. Few in 
the community praised him during his life. Probably no man in 
the whole history of the Republic was ever so severely criticised 
and so mercilessly lampooned in the dark days of 1864; after three 
years of trouble he had sustained a burden which would have 
broken down an ordinary man. He said in August of that year 
that it seemed there were no friends; and he looked forward to the 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR HUGHES 295 

next election as almost certain to go against the party which he 
represented. 

Without sacrilege I may say he was "A man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief." And, frequently alone, without the sus- 
taining encouragement of even those who were close to him in 
his official family, he endeavored to exercise that judgment which 
history commends and that extraordinary talent for analyzing diffi- 
cult situations which is the marvel of our later day. 

My friends, Lincoln represents what the American Republic is 
capable of and in one personality typifies what we have accom- 
plished and for what we can reasonably hope. 

He was a humane man, a man of emotion, which he never al- 
lowed to control his reason ; a man of sentiment and deep feeling. 
He was a lowly man who never asserted himself as superior to his 
fellows, but he could rise in the dignity of his manhood to a ma- 
jesty that has seldom been equalled by any ruler of any people 
under any form of government. When Lee sent to Grant and sug- 
gested that there might be some talk with regard to the disposition 
that might be made of public affairs in the interest of peace, and 
Grant forwarded the communication, or the substance of it, to the 
President, the President, without a moment's hesitation or without 
consultation with anyone, said, in effect: "You shall confine your 
communications with General Lee to the matter of capitulation, 
or to minor or military subjects. You shall not discuss with him 
any political affairs. The President reserves to himself the con- 
trol of those questions and will not submit them to any military 
convention." It was not an assertion of any superiority which 
he felt above his brother man. It was simply the realization of 
the dignity of his office and its responsibility in a supreme crisis, 
and the willingness to assume that responsibility before the 



296 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

American people with that innate confidence of which his su- 
preme intellect could never deprive him. 

My friends, we see in Lincoln patience, the reasoning faculty, 
humanity, the democratic sentiment, patient consideration, all 
combined, and we may well learn from him the lessons which at 
every hour of our history we should well study. There may he 
those who look with uncertainty upon our future, who feel op- 
pressed by the problems of the day. I am not one of them. 

"Why," said Lincoln^ "should we not have patient confidence 
in the ultimate justice of the American people?" 

Why not, indeed? Who are the American people? They are 
the most intelligent people organized into any civil society on the 
face of this broad earth. They have abundant opportunities for 
education. They are keen and alert. They are those whom you 
meet in every walk of life. Their common sense is of general 
recognition among all the peoples of the world. Why not have 
patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the American peo- 
ple? If we can only feel as Lincoln felt and derive our political 
sentiments from a study of the principles of the Declaration of 
Independence and proceed as Lincoln did, with remorseless logic, 
to the consideration of the demands of every exigency, there can 
be no question but that each problem will be solved, and that 
every decade of American history will witness a fresh advance, 
and that the prosperity of the future will far transcend anything 
that we have realized in the past. 

Undoubtedly abuses exist; undoubtedly abuses must be cured. 
If there is any man who thinks, or any set of men who think that 
by any astuteness they may stand in the way of progress, and may 
prevent the correction of evils that exist, let them beware; they 
will find themselves impotent. Progress will take no account of 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR HUGHES 297 

them. The American people will advance step by step surely and 
inevitably to a realization of their ideals, and nothing whatever 
will stand in the way in the course of time of that equality of 
opportunity and of equal rights before the law which the Declara- 
tion of Independence announces, and which the Constitution was 
intended to conserve. 

What we need to-day is a definition of evils. What we need 
to-day is a delimiting of abuses, and let the whole power and 
strength of the Republic, as represented by those who are natu- 
rally its leaders, be devoted to the careful and calm considera- 
tion of remedies in order that we may save our prosperity, and at 
the same time render every condition which threatens us impotent 
and powerless, because the will of the people, in the interest 
of the people, the deliberate expression of the popular judgment, 
must in this country at all times be supreme. There is plenty of 
coal on board ; every man is at his post ; steam is up, and the only 
question is as to the direction, and to avoid the sandbars and the 
shoals. It is a question of the selection of the right course. I 
believe most thoroughly in the judgment of the American people. 
Every man in this country worthy of his citizenship desires to 
work. He desires to get a fair opportunity to show what is in 
him. He desires to have the advantages which from boyhood 
he has been taught that this American Republic affords. He de- 
sires to have hurdles and obstacles which may have been put in 
his way by special privilege or by a perversion of government re- 
moved. He desires to have no disadvantage created by any ill- 
considered interference with governmental relations. But on the 
other hand, he intends to have the fullest advantage and oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of his individual power, with recognition 
of the equal right of every other man to the exercise of his in- 



298 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

dividual power; so that all may be prosperous and all may succeed; 
and all that we need is to put a stop to those things which are 
inimical to our common advantage, and insist upon our common 
rights, and reason together in regard to what is fair and what is 
just, and accomplish things with full ascertainment of the facts 
because they are right and because the people, in their deliberate 
judgment, demand that they should be accomplished. We are all 
fortunate that we have had a Lincoln. What would the country be 
if we were all a lot of sordid money-grabbers with nothing to point 
to but the particular sharpness of A, or the special success, in 
some petty manipulation, of B? What a grand thing it is that 
we have the inheritance of the memory of a man who had every- 
thing which we could aspire to in intellectual attainments, who 
was endowed with a strength of moral purpose, who was perfectly 
sincere in the interest of the people, and who gave his life work 
and eventually his life itself in order that our Union, with its op- 
portunities, might survive. 

I am proud, my friends, to have had an opportunity to study 
Lincoln's life. If any of you have failed to take advantage of 
that opportunity do not let another year go by without making a 
thorough study of that career. It is an epitome of Americanism. 
It will realize all that you have dreamed of and all that you can 
possibly imagine. It is simply a representation of a man upon 
whose brow God has written a line of superiority, who never ar- 
rogated it to himself except in his great function of discharging 
the highest office of government. Defeated again and again, fail- 
ing to realize the ambition that was nearest to him, again and 
again he arose by sheer force of intellect and character until he 
came to the point where a Nation's burden was put upon him, 
and he carried it so nobly that forever he will be to us the na- 
tion's representative, the typical American. 



THE TWENTY-THIRD 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 
REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1909 



Address of 
HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 



THEODORE E. BURTON. 



Congressman Burton was bom in Jefferson, 0., 1851. 
He graduated from Oberlin College, and was ad- 
mitted to the Bar in 1875, since which time he has been 
in active practice in Cleveland. Member of Congress for 
the Twenty-first Ohio District, 1889-91 and 1895- 1909. 
He is the author of several books and Chairman of the 
Inland Waterways Commission. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 



Mr. President, Members of the Republican Club of the City of 
New York, Ladies and Gentlemen : On this twelfth day of Febru- 
ary, 1909, nearly one thousand meetings have been held in the 
city of New York to celebrate this anniversary. The attendance 
upon those meetings has probably been larger than upon any oc- 
casion in any city for the praise or honor of any human being, 
living or dead. There have been no ceremonial processions, as to 
a coronation, no military parade to attract the multitude. It has 
been simply the plain but impressive tribute of the people to the 
memory of Abraham Lincoln. 

Surely this gives reason for a note of optimism. We cannot 
be so deficient in civic virtue as some of our critics at home and 
abroad would have us be. To-day the exchanges have been closed, 
business suspended and patriotism given the right of way. Love 
of our country and of the great men who have exalted her is not 
dead; it is not even sleeping! Prosperity has not separated us 
from patriotism, and the men who have upon them the garb of 
business could change their garments and readily assume the uni- 
form of war. So let us be confident for the future. Let us be- 
lieve that if he whose name we commemorate to-day were to look 
upon us from the unseen world and were to speak to us he would 
say, ''Enjoy, children of the twentieth century, the abundance 
which is g^ven to your country, but always let your hearts and 



THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



your hands go out to her people, to the poor and lowly, whom I 
loved, the black as well as the white." 

One hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was born. No pains- 
taking chronicler has given us the hour of the day, whether it 
were morning or evening; but we are told that the rude cabin 
was so poor that there was no cradle, nor even a manger, to re- 
ceive the infant. The habitation was well-nigh as barren as the 
abodes of the very foxes and bears that roamed the woods. But 
if any discerning spirit could have pierced the veil which con- 
ceals the future, he might well have exclaimed, in the language 
of Macbeth when frightened at the apparition: 

''What is this 
That rises like the issue of a king, 
And wears upon his baby brow the round 
And top of sovereignty?" 

For where is the emperor or king who has done so much for the 
progress of the human race? 

A hundred years creates a broad span in the world's history in 
any age, but the changes of the century since Lincoln was born 
have an importance in the world's advance surpassing that of all 
the cycles of Cathay. It is unnecessary to dwell upon all the 
marvels of invention, the progress of peace and the growth of 
popular government. Moreover, previous to the year 1815 the pre- 
dominant condition among the nations was one of war, while since 
then the prevailing situation has been one of peace, and con- 
structive forces have been powerfully at work. And who in all 
this period will gain such immortality as he whose birthday we 
are now observing? In studying the careers of men who have 
marked off milestones in the forward march of humanity we 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 303 

must come to the conclusion that it is only when qualities of the 
heart have been joined to those of the head that the greatest re- 
sults have been g-ained. In no man of any age has there been a 
more superb combination of greatness of intellect with g^reatness of 
heart and of will than in him. 

Lincoln's influence has not been and will not be confined to any 
one country or clime. It was the mightiest factor in the estab- 
lishment of great political principles now gaining the ascendancy 
almost everywhere. Yet the memory of his deeds will exert its 
most beneficent influence for all the weak and the struggling who 
lift their faces heavenward the world over. It may be super- 
fluous to touch again upon the disheartening surroundings of his 
youth, the poverty and squalor which rested so heavily upon him, 
and yet his rise to the most lofty olficial position on the globe af- 
fords a most inspiring illustration of the possibilities in this free 
land of ours. 

That to which I wish to call especial attention in the life of 
Abraham Lincoln is that he was the embodiment — it may be said 
the incarnation — of the people. Lacking in his youth the life of 
partial seclusion which belongs to educated men, who are trained 
in colleges or universities, he possessed a compensating advantage 
arising from his constant contact with the people, and with neigh- 
bors and kindred of the less favored ranks of society, whose daily 
struggle was for the simple necessities of life. Thus he came to 
understand the emotions, the thoughts, the aspirations of the lowly, 
and could interpret with unerring instinct those currents of pop- 
ular feeling with which every public man who expects to succeed 
must gain familiarity. He was no visionary idealist, for he was 
peculiarly well informed upon all that interests the mass of our 
citizens or guides the public opinion of the nation. He did not 
need to listen for the voices of the time, or as it is expressed in 



304 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

modem parlance to keep his ear to the ground. He knew the 
people — he was one of them, and had lived in such close associa- 
tion with them that he could not go astray in judging what they 
would accept or support. 

In every political organization there must be some force which 
holds the ultimate power. In a military despotism it is a stand- 
ing army ; in an absolute monarchy it is the influence of the court 
and those surrounding it. But in a well-ordered republic, such 
as America, the despotism of public opinion holds sway. Without 
a favoring public opinion great reforms cannot be accomplished. 
Lincoln realized that it was best to depend upon the convictions 
of the people^ and to appeal to their conscience and their judg- 
ment, rather than to seek to exercise an overbearing influence. 
These forces upon which he relied were stronger than the armies 
of potentates, and his rule was more powerful than that of the 
most absolute monarch. There have been other men who were 
of a more dominant character, and on the other hand there have 
been those high — yes, highest — in authority who were more dis- 
posed to give consideration to the thoughts and sentiments of the 
time ; but for a combination of both these qualities Lincoln stands 
forth transcendent. 

Nor was he a servile follower of the dictates of the majority. 
Indeed he was matchless as a leader, possessing in the highest 
degree the ability to conciliate men to his measures, as well as to 
adapt his course of action to time and surroundings. He lived 
in a time of upheaval, when party lines were being dissolved and 
old things were giving way to new — in brief, he lived in the 
midst of a revolution. We had maintained an army of, say, 25; 000 
men, and were called upon to increase it by more than 2,000,000 
enlistments. We had enjoyed peace, and had become inured to 
quietness, when all at once the country was plunged into terrible 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 305 

war. There sprang up the widest and most bitter differences of 
opinion as to what steps should be taken. With what a masterful 
hand, with what a marvelous gift in the choice of means and fit oc- 
casions, did he harmonize all these divergent factions, and bring 
together, as in one mighty force, all those who sought to save the 
XTnion! He was never premature, nor yet too late, in the taking 
of any great step. For example, when generals in the field had 
declared the slaves in their localities to be free he revoked their 
orders. Yet later, when the time was ripe, he issued the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation at the opportune moment, and opposition faded 
away in recognition of the timeliness of the measure. Thus we 
can aptly compare him to a mighty river which in its course meets 
many rocks and obstacles, and encounters sharp turns, but as each 
obstruction is reached, gracefully parts its waters without turbu- 
lence or hindrance and leaving not one drop behind, flows majes- 
tically onward with ever increasing volume to the ocean. 

In order that the course of a nation's life may be changed by 
any single individual there must be first a great occasion, and 
next a man predestined by his qualities to meet it. Some great 
problem in which the line between right and wrong can be clearly 
drawn must demand solution. This occasion existed in 1861 in 
the call to resist the aggressions of slavery. The nation's con- 
science was becoming awakened, and this frightful crime was be- 
ginning to appear to all in its true light. In the second place, 
the time had come when there must be a settlement of the all- 
important question of the relations between the central govern- 
ment and the different units which make it up. A growing spirit 
of nationality had rendered it imperative that the vagueness and 
the compromises of the early days should be cleared away. To 
grapple with these momentous difficulties there was required a 
leader endowed with clearness of insight, capacity for present- 



3o6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

ing unanswerable arguments for the policies he advocated, and a 
mind and heart which should assure for him popular confidence. 
And all these requisites Abraham Lincoln possessed in a fullness 
which made him supreme as the man of the hour. 

With mighty grasp he comprehended his country's needs more 
clearly than any other statesman, and was able to distinguish the 
proper remedies and frame the wisest plans for the relief of exist- 
ing conditions. More courageously and distinctly than any other 
man of the time he pointed out the irrepressible conflict between 
freedom and slavery. Unequalled in the keenness of his rea- 
soning and the cogency with which he could state the grounds of 
his beliefs, he added to his logical faculty an aptitude in illustra- 
tion which enabled him to make his arguments clear even to 
the humblest man. 

Senator Ingalls once told me that in the year 1859 Mr. Lincoln 
had addressed a meeting out in Kansas. The Senator was a mem- 
ber of the entertainment committee, and on the following morning 
he went around to the little hotel and found Mr. Lincoln, with a 
great pair of old style rubbers on, warming his feet by the stove 
and entertaining a number of stage drivers with very interest- 
ing stories. It has been said that occasionally his stories were 
not of the most refined character. It is unfortunate sometimes to 
have a good memory. But Mr. Lincoln's anecdotes were like the 
fables of -ffisop — not the language of a jester, but told to make 
clear to simpler minds complex and difficult problems, and, besides, 
in order to relieve the dreadful tensity of the times. With the 
accounts of slaughter morning and evening, and with the g^eat 
strain which rested upon him in Washington, there was need of 
some means of keeping his heart from being overborne and his 
will from bending. Twenty-five years ago this very evening I re- 
member having heard from Mr. John Hay, afterwards Secretary 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 307 

of State, a story of Lincoln's which shows the latter's wonderful 
facility in illustrating the salient points of a situation. When 
Colonel Hay was private secretary at the White House he had in- 
structions not to wake the President unless something- of extreme 
importance was to be communicated. One night a dispatch came 
from General Burnside from Knoxville, Tennessee, to the effect 
that defeat and surrender were practically upon him, and deem- 
ing this sufficiently urgent, Mr. Hay went upstairs and roused Mr. 
Lincoln with the information. After yawning a little, Lincoln 
said, "I am glad of it; I am glad to hear it." "But, Mr. Presi- 
dent, that does not seem an item of news to be glad of." "Well," 
said Lincoln, "it reminds me of a poor woman I used to know out 
in Menard County." (His illustrations usually came from Menard 
or Sangamon or Logan or other counties in that vicinity.) "She 
had a large brood of children. They wandered through the woods, 
and it was impossible for her to clothe them properly — she could 
hardly feed them. The woman always used to say that it did her 
heart good whenever any of those young ones came around 
squalling, because then she knew he was still alive, while other- 
wise she might not know but that he was dead." I think no ex- 
planation is needed to show how perfectly this applied to the 
situation. 

After the battle of Malvern Hill Lincoln was approached by a 
prominent Senator with a very dejected bearing, and the Presi- 
dent said, "Why, Senator, you have a very sad face to-day. It re- 
minds me of a little incident." The distinguished caller took it 
upon himself to rebuke Lincoln, saying, "Mr. President, this sit- 
uation is too grave for the telling of anecdotes. I do not care to 
listen to one." Mr. Lincoln was aroused by this remark and re- 
plied, "Senator, do you think that this situation weighs more 
heavily upon you than it does upon me ? If the cause goes against 



3o8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

US, not only will the country be lost, but I shall be disgraced 
to all time. But what would happen if I appeared upon the 
streets of Washington to-day with such a countenance as yours? 
The news would be spread throughout the country that the Pres- 
ident's very demeanor is an admission that defeat is inevitable. 
And I say to you, sir, that it would be better for you to infuse 
some cheerfulness into that countenance of yours as you go about 
upon the streets of Washington." A man who was witness of this 
conversation is still living. 

And we may dismiss the idea that Lincoln was gross in his 
stories. He may have related some anecdotes which did not rise 
to the highest degree of dignity, but they were for the purpose, as 
I have said, of illustrating difficult problems or relaxing the gloom 
of the times. 

In addition to his penetrating perception of the needs of the 
day and his remarkable mental equipment for bringing his views 
home to the minds of the people, Lincoln possessed a rugged sin- 
cerity and an integrity of purpose which gained for him the un- 
swerving confidence of his fellow citizens. He sympathized deep- 
ly with all the best hopes and desires of humanity, and his par- 
ticipation in the freeing of the slaves was merely one indication of 
his identity with the plain people whom God had made. Every 
fibre of his nature was permeated with conceptions which caused 
him to espouse the cause of the weak and the lowly, and gave him 
strength with all who were actuated by conscience. Endowed 
with such a personality, Lincoln was the living representative of 
the spirit of pure democracy — and of the essential principle con- 
tained in the immortal declaration that all men are created equal. 

It is to be remembered of Abraham Lincoln, too, that he was an 
heroic figure in no ordinary time, but in a day of Titanic con- 
flict. To many of us the Civil War is becoming an indistinct mem- 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 309 



ory. I count that person fortunate who was born in time to re- 
call the stirring events of that thrilling era — the gathering of one 
of the mightiest armies of all ages from the farms and workshops 
and counting houses; the undying spirit of patriotism which was 
aroused; the quick-flashing news of defeats and victories; the ru- 
mors of the fall of Richmond, reported and denied within a single 
day; and the unspeakable calamity in the loss of the lives of the 
flower of the youth of the North and the South alike, whose ab- 
sence can never be atoned for in our nation's progress, and whose 
graves are scattered over plain and valley, an everlasting reminder 
of the magnitude and horror of the great struggle! In this 
colossal combat Abraham Lincoln looms up as the bulwark of the 
Union ; as the great force for the maintenance of law and the pres- 
ervation of our country. When days were dark and friends were 
falling off he issued a call for troops, and from the great loyal 
heart of the North came a mighty response, 

"We are coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand more, 
Prom Mississippi's winding stream, and from New England's 

shore ; 
You have called us and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide, 
To lay us down for freedom's sake our brothers' bones beside !" 

The great free people of our land were aroused^ and an army 
was gathered as strong, as sure to be triumphant, as any that ever 
mustered beneath the eagles of any sovereign of the old world; 
and as efficient in its service as the most highly trained and dis- 
ciplined veterans of Europe's legions, though often meeting with 
defeat and high mortality losses. And why? Because they were 
fighting with a leader whom they trusted, and for a great cause. 
Because there was no hireling or mercenary spirit actuating them, 



310 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

but rather their sense of responsibility to the great country which 
they loved so well and for which they v/ere willing to die. 

Well may it be said that in all the selections of rulers there was 
never a more fortunate choice than when the great convention at 
Chicago named Abraham Lincoln. But for the great emergency 
of the time and the happy circumstance of this nomination he 
might have remained a mere local figure, with a fame scarcely 
extending beyond the bounds of a single state. In the hour of 
the nation's extremest peril he was called to the direction of af- 
fairs. With a strong hand and a gentle heart he guided the coun- 
try through and brought victory out of rebellion. Yet in that 
mighty contest there was not in him any of that overmastering 
self-seeking which has made many men great. He was great be- 
cause he must be. The forces which impelled him were rather 
overwhelming compulsions dwelling within him and driving him 
onward as if irresistible Fate determined the path, into new and 
grander ways of goodness and beneficence; making of him, almost 
before he was aware, emancipator of slaves and the restorer of his 
country. He executed the decrees of destiny which were laid upon 
him to execute. 

In all the duties of his great office there was an abiding belief 
that even those who were his enemies would yet see the right 
way. The first weapons which suggested themselves to him were 
not force and violence, but reason and persuasion. Even in the 
hearts of those who were in rebellion he was sure that better 
angels existed, and reaching out a hand across the chasm between 
North and South, which was soon to be so bloody, he appealed to 
those who were seeking to destroy the government in the historic 
words so often repeated : "The mystic chords of memory, stretching 
from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 311 

the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the bet- 
ter angels of our nature." At the same time he asked why there 
should not be patient confidence in the justice of the people, de- 
manding if there were any better or equal hope in the world. 

And again, toward the close of the war, what could have been 
more noble than Lincoln's policy of preparing the way for lasting 
peace? His life was cut off before the days of reconstruction, but 
his policy was always one of conciliation. He resorted to no cruel 
measures. He recognized the Southern soldiers as belligerents, and 
took care that prisoners were well provided for; always keeping 
in mind the time when the disunited states should once more be 
parts of an even mightier nation within which the North and 
South would dwell together in harmony and in strength. No one 
contributed equally with him to the good feeling which now pre- 
vails between different sections of the country — a good feeling 
which Lincoln was sure would exist again, though time would be 
necessary to heal the awful wounds. 

For every great leader who has played a prominent part in the 
world',s affairs there is what may be called a to-day and a to-mor- 
row. The to-day of Abraham Lincoln was chiefly made up of the 
brief period of a little more than four years, during which he 
acted as chief magistrate. His to-morrow will be made up of the 
deathless influence which his memory and example will exert 
upon the world's future. The world will give him more than an 
immortality of fame; it will give him an immortality of influence 
as well, an influence as potent as if he still dwelt upon the earth. 
To all time he will be remembered as a noble type of that true 
greatness which delights in sympathy and in mercy. I do not re- 
call that Lincoln ever signed a death warrant. I do know that 
he saved many a life from death, and that even the weak and 
the outcast were given equal consideration with the strongest 



312 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

and most fortunate, when they came to the White House to se- 
cure a hearing from the President of the United States. On other 
anniversaries and in future generations he will he honored not 
alone because of his great office, nor because of his great place in 
history, but also because of his kindly nature and the depth of his 
sympathies. With a melancholy which seemed to forecast his 
tragic fate he lived the life which we live — unselfish, often in 
sorrow, noble in all those qualities which become a man. His per- 
sonal presence is no longer with us, but if ever corruption or trea- 
son shall be prevalent in the land, if moral desolation shall bring 
us near to the gates of death, then the patriot who, weary and 
despairing, grows faint in the struggle, will in the dreams and 
hopes which give courage to his spirit, see the form of Abraham 
Lincoln again among the people whom he loved so well, sadder, 
kindlier, mightier than when alive. 

I congratulate you, citizens of New York, on the prospects of 
almost limitless development here afforded you in this great 
metropolis. Its growth has excelled that of any city in the annals 
of commerce. More than twenty-five hundred years ago the cen- 
ter of the world's commerce was located at Tyre, described by one 
of the prophets as "the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, 
whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth." After the lapse 
of centuries Carthage assumed the same proud position. Then, 
after centuries more, the commercial center, by the fortunes of 
war, shifted to imperial Rome. Later still and by more peaceful 
forces, Venice and subsequently Amsterdam became the leading 
marts of trade; until there was made the change which seemed 
to fix the final seat of commercial power at London. Yet in the 
past few decades it has become apparent that another change has 
been coming to pass, this time assuredly the final one, from Lon- 
don on the banks of the Thames to New York City on the banks 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 



3x3 



of the Hudson. Other cities there are which take the forefront 
in some particular department of commerce, industry or finance; 
but it remains for you to be supreme in all. May your civic life 
ever be worthy of a city so great and prosperous ! 

Republicans and Democrats, you have your responsibility in 
the Government of this country, for the standards in politics and 
in public life. Life should not be made up of trips from uptown, 
downtown, nor of the sole pursuit of a single profession or branch 
of business. Our everyday thought should turn to the state, which 
has given us these golden opportunities of life and to which we 
owe allegiance as citizens. 

I have sometimes spoken on the rights of politicians. The 
prevalent idea is that no one is entitled to any large degree of 
credit who has been in political life until he passes beyond the 
river. Then he is sometimes called a statesman. But my con- 
tention is that every politician has a right to be judged carefully 
and fairly, not superficially. The public should not make up its 
decisions on the basis of sensational headlines, but each citizen 
should give that attention to the affairs affecting his country, his 
state and his city which he bestows on his own profession or oc- 
cupation. 

President Harrison very appropriately said, in speaking of the 
framing of our Constitution, that no set of men could have framed 
an instrument or established a government so perfect that the in- 
telligent and patriotic members of society could go away and 
leave the document to take care of itself and of the public weal. 
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and eternal diligence is the 
price of good government. My thought is that the crying evil 
in the politics of the day is the indifference of the very large 
share of our citizens. Graft will disappear, corrupt men will be 
driven out of office — indeed will no longer be able to obtain office — 



314 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

if the citizens of this republic give that attention to public af- 
fairs which they owe, not only for the credit and the glory of 
their country, but for their own benefit as well. Let this, citizens 
of New York, be your study, to make for yourselves a model 
municipality, and then so long as the Hudson flows by to the sea 
this city will be a source of influence, yes, of almost commanding 
influence, in the concerns which pertain to the state and nation. 

A hundred years from now others will gather to celebrate the 
anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I do not know what 
will be the conditions then. I am not sure whether our sov- 
ereignty shall be confined within the present borders of what is 
called Continental America. Our influence may have extended far 
beyond those limits. But if there shall be expansion I hope that 
it will not be by conquering legions or battleships, but by the 
realization on the part of our neighbors that they will be better 
off with us, as a part of the free United States of America, so that 
they shall come to us voluntarily seeking annexation. I cannot 
forecast what will be our means of communication, whether on 
the earth, or the sea, or in the air. Neither do I know what will 
be the prevailing type of American manhood and womanhood ; but 
I most earnestly hope that this type will be cast in the same splen- 
did mould which has furnished the men and women of the best 
days of the past and the present — men and women with the high- 
est ideals; and that then, as now, the memory of Abraham Lincoln 
will be an inspiration and an example to follow and to emulate, 
though "dynasties shall have decayed and golden diadems crum- 
bled into dust." 



THE TWENTY-THIRD 

ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 

of the 

REPUBLICAN CLUB 

of the 

City of New York 

FEBRUARY 12, 1909 



Address of 



BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 



BOOKER TALIAFERRO WASHINGTON, A.M.,LL.D. 

Mr. Washington was bom near Hale's Ford, Va,, 
1859, of African descent. He was educated at Hampton 
Institute, Va., where he taught until called to Tuskegee, 
Ala., by the authorities of that State. His successful 
founding and administration of the Tuskegee Industrial 
Institute has made him a commanding figure in work 
for the Negro. He is well known as a speaker and as 
the author of many books on racial and social subjects, 
among them "Up From Slavery," 1901; "Future of the 
American Negro," 1902; "Working with the Hands," 
1904; "Tuskegee and Its People," 1905; "Putting the 
Most Into Life," 1906; "Life of Frederick Douglass," 
1907; "The Negro in Business," 1907. 



ADDRESS OF 

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 



President Young and Gentlemen : You ask that which he found 
a piece of property and turned into a free American citizen to speak 
to you to-night of Abraham Lincoln. I am not fitted by ancestry, 
nor by training, to be your teacher to-night, for, as I have stated, 
I was born a slave. My first knowledge of Abraham Lincoln 
came in this way: I lay sleeping one morning on the dirt floor 
of our slave cabin; I was awakened by the prayers of my mother 
kneeling over my bed as I lay wrapped in a bundle of rags, earnest- 
ly praying that one day Abraham Lincoln might succeed and that 
one day she and her boy might be free. You give me the chance, 
Gentlemen of the Republican Club, to celebrate with you and the 
nation to-night the answer to that prayer. Says the Great Book 
somewhere, "Though a man die, yet shall he live." If this be true 
of the ordinary man, how much more is it true of the hero of the 
hour and the hero of the century, Abraham Lincoln. One hundred 
years of the life and influence of Lincoln is the story of the strug- 
gle, the trials, the triumphs, the success of the people of our com- 
plex American civilization. Interwoven into the warp and woof 
of this story is the moving story of the people of all races and 
colors in their struggles from weakness to power, from poverty to 
wealth, from slavery to freedom. Knit into the story of the life 
of Lincoln also is the story of the success of the nation, and 
the welding of all creeds, colors and races into one great composite 



3i8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



nation, leaving each individual, separate group free to lead and 
live its own special social life, yet each a part of a great whole. 
If a man die, shall he live? Answering this question as applied 
to my race perhaps you expect me to confine my words of appre- 
ciation to the great boon that our martyred president conferred 
upon my race. My undying gratitude and that of ten millions 
of my race for that, and yet more. To have been the instrument 
which was used by Providence to confer freedom upon four millions 
of African slaves, now grown into ten millions of free American 
citizens, would within itself have brought eternal fame to any 
name. But, my friends, this is not the only claim that Lincoln 
has upon our sense of gratitude and our sense of appreciation. 
To-day by the side of General S. C. Armstrong, and by the side of 
William Lloyd Garrison, Lincoln lives. In the very highest sense 
he lives in the present more potently than fifty years ago. If that 
which is seen is temporal, that which is unseen is eternal. He 
lives in the thirty-two thousand young men and women of the 
negro race learning trades and other useful occupations, in the 
two hundred thousand farms acquired by those that he freed, in 
the more than four hundred thousand homes built, in the forty- 
six banks established and ten thousand stores owned, in the five 
hundred and Mty millions of dollars worth of taxable property 
in hand, in the twenty-eight thousand public schools with thirty 
thousand teachers, in the one hundred and seventy industrial 
schools, colleges and universities, and in the twenty-three thousand 
churches and twenty-six thousand ministers. But, my friends, 
above and beyond all this he lives in the steady, unalterable de- 
termination of these millions of black citizens to continue to climb 
the ladder of the highest success, to perfect themselves in the 
highest usefulness and to perfect themselves year by year in strong, 
robust American characters. For making all this possible, Lin- 



ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 319 



coin lives to-night. But again, for a higher reason, he lives to- 
night in every corner of the Republic. To set the physical man 
free means much; to set the spiritual man free means more, for 
so often the keeper is on the inside of the prison bars and the 
prisoner on the outside. As an individual, as grateful as I am to 
Lincoln for freedom of body, my gratitude is still greater for 
freedom of soul, the liberty which permits one to live up in that 
atmosphere where he refuses to permit sectional or racial hatred 
to drag down and warp and narrow his soul. The signing of the 
Emancipation Proclamation was a great event, and yet it was 
but the symbol of another still greater and more momentous. We 
who celebrate this anniversary should not forget that the same 
pen that gave freedom to four millions of African slaves at the 
same time struck the shackles of slavery from the souls of twenty- 
seven millions of American citizens of another color. 

In any country, regardless of what its laws may say, wherever 
people act upon the principle that the disadvantage of one man is 
the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever in any coun- 
try the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent 
upon the happiness of the weakest individual, there freedom exists. 
In abolishing slavery Lincoln proclaimed the principle that even 
in the case of the humblest and lowest of mankind, the welfare of 
each is still the good of all. In re-establishing in this country the 
principle that at bottom the interests of humanity and the in- 
dividual are one, he freed men's souls from spiritual bondage and he 
freed them to mutual helpfulness. Henceforth no man or no race 
in the North or in the South need feel constrained to hate or fear 
his brother. By the same token that Lincoln made America free, 
he pushed back the boundaries of freedom everywhere, gave the 
spirit of liberty a wider influence throughout the world and re- 
established the dignity of man as a man. By the same act that 



320 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

freed my race he said to the civilized and uncivilized world that 
man everywhere must be free, that man everywhere must be en- 
lightened, and the Lincoln spirit of freedom and fair-play will 
never cease to spread and grow in power until throughout the 
world men everywhere shall know the truth and the truth shall 
make them free. 

Lincoln was wise enough to recognize that which is true in 
the present and true for all time, that in a state of slavery man 
renders the lowest and most costly form of service to his fel- 
lows. In a state of freedom and enlightenment he renders the 
highest and most helpful form of service. The world 
is fast learning that of all forms of slavery there is none that is 
so degrading, that is so hurtful, as that form of slavery which 
makes one human being to hate another by reason of his race or 
by reason of his color. One man, my friends, cannot hold an- 
other man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch 
with him. When I was a boy I used to have a great reputation 
for fighting. I could whip every boy with whom I fought and 
I was careful to maintain that reputation as long as possible, but 
the people about me did not know how I maintained it. I was 
always careful in my selection of the boy with whom I fought. 
I was always sure that he was smaller than I was, weaker than I 
was. As I grew older I used to take pleasure, as I thought, in 
getting hold of those little fellows and holding them down in the 
ditch, but when I grew to manhood I soon learned that when I 
held those little fellows down in the ditch I had to remain down 
there with them as long as they remained, and to let them up I 
had to get up myself. 

My friends, one who goes through life with his eyes closed 
against all that is best in another race is as narrow and as circum- 



ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 321 

scribed as one who fights in battle with one hand tied behind 
him. 

Lincoln was in the truest sense great because he unfettered him- 
self. He climbed up out of the valley where his vision was nar- 
rowed and weakened by the fog and miasma onto the mountain top, 
where in pure and unclouded atmosphere he could see the truth 
which enabled him to rate all men at their true worth. Growing 
out of his universal ascent and atmosphere may there crystallize 
throughout the nation a resolve that on such a mountain the 
American people will strive to live. We owe then to Lincoln, 
physical freedom, moral freedom, and yet not all. There is a debt 
of gratitude which we as individuals, no matter to what 
race or nation we may belong, must recognize as due to Abraham 
Lincoln. Not for what he did as Chief Magistrate of a nation, 
for what he did as a man. In his rise from the most abject pov- 
erty and ignorance to a position of the highest usefulness and 
power, he taught one of the greatest of all lessons. In fighting 
his own battle from obscurity and squalor he fought the battle 
of every other individual and every other race that was down, 
and so helped to pull up every other man that was down, no mat- 
ter where he lived. People so often forget that by every inch 
that the lowest man crawls up he makes it easier for every other 
man to get up. To-day throughout the world, because Lincoln 
lived and struggled and triumphed, every boy who is ignorant, 
every boy who is in poverty, every boy who is despised, every boy 
who is discouraged holds his head a little higher, his heart beats 
a little faster, his ambition to be something and to do some- 
thing is a little stronger, because Lincoln blazed the way. 

To my own race at this point in its career there are special 
lessons for us in the life of Abraham Lincoln. In so far as his 
life emphasizes patience, long-suffering, sincerity, naturalness. 



322 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

dogged determination and courage, courage to avoid the super- 
ficial, courage to persist insistently and seek after the substance 
instead of the shadow, so far as it emphasizes these elements, the 
character, the life of Lincoln points the road that my race is to 
travel to success. As a race we are learning more and more, I 
believe, in an increasing degree, that the best way for us to honor 
the memory of our great emancipator is in trying to be like him. 
Like him, the negro should seek to be simple, without bigotry and 
without ostentation. That is great power, not simplicity. Great 
men are always simple men, great races are those that strive 
for simplicity. We, as a race, should, like Lincoln, have moral 
courage to be what we are and not pretend to be what we are 
not. We should keep in mind that no one can degrade us except 
ourselves, and that if we are worthy no influence can defeat us. 
Like other races we shall meet with obstacles. The negro will 
often meet with stumbling blocks, often be sorely tried, often be 
sorely tempted, but he should remember that freedom in its highest 
and broadest sense has never been a bequest, it is always a con- 
quest. In the final test the success of our race will be in propor- 
tion to the service that it renders to the world. In the long run 
the badge of service is the badge of sovereignty. 

With all his other elements of strength, Lincoln possessed in 
the highest degree, patience, and, as I have said, courage. The 
highest form of courage is not that which is always exhibited 
on the battlefield in the midst of the flare of trumpets and the 
waving of flags. The highest courage is of the Lincoln kind; 
it is the same kind of courage that is daily manifested by the 
thousands of young men and young women who are going out 
from Hampton and Tuskegee and Atlanta, and similar institu- 
tions, without thought of salary, without thought of personal com- 
fort, and are giving up their lives in the erection of a school 



ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 323 

system, the building of schoolhouses, the prolonging of school 
terms, the teaching of our people how to build decent, clean homes 
and live honorable, clean lives. And, my friends, those young men 
and young women who are going out in this simple way are fight- 
ing the battles of this country just as truly, just as bravely, as 
any man who goes out to do battle against a foreign foe. 

In paying my tribute of respect to the martyred president I de- 
sire to say a word further in behalf of an element of brave and 
true white men of the South, who, though they thought they saw 
in Lincoln's policy the ruin of all that they believed in and hoped 
for, have nevertheless loyally accepted the results of the Civil 
War and to-day are working with a courage that few people in 
the North can understand or appreciate to uplift the negro, and 
thus complete the emancipation which Lincoln began. And here 
I am almost tempted, my friends, even in this presence, to add that 
it would require almost as high a degree of courage for men of 
the type of J. M. L. Curry, John E. Gordon and Eobert E. Lee to ac- 
cept in the manner and the spirit that they did the results of the 
Civil War as the courage displayed on the battlefield, by Lincoln, 
by Grant and Sherman in saving the Republic. 

And in this connection^ my friends, forgive me for adding this 
in this presence : I am glad to meet here the Bishop of the City of 
New York : I am glad to meet here the senator-elect from the great 
State of Ohio; I am glad to meet the president of your club; I am 
glad to greet and to shake hands with all the noble men who 
surround this banquet board, but, my friends, there is one man in 
this room whom I am glad most of all to meet, and that is the 
young man who played with me when I was a slave, the grandson 
of the man who owned my body on a Virginia farm — I refer to my 
friend, Mr. A. H, Burroughs, whom I met for the first time this 
week since the day of slavery, and who is now an honored lawyer 



324 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



in your city. How well do I remember that in the days of slavery 
we played together in my master's yard, and perhaps fought to- 
gether. But, my friends, I recall also the picture early one morn- 
ing of the slaves gathering around the master's house and about 
hearing for the first time the Emancipation Proclamation read 
to us that declared us free. The same proclamation that declared 
me a freeman declared my boyhood friend and the grandson of my 
former owner a free man at the same time. 

Lincoln also, my friends, let me add, was a Southern man by 
birth, but he was one of those white men of whom there is a 
large and growing class who resented the idea that in order to 
assert and maintain the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race it was 
necessary that another group of human beings should be kept in 
ignorance. Lincoln was not afraid or ashamed to come in con- 
tact with the lowly of all races. His reputation and social stand- 
ing were not of such a transitory and transparent kind that he 
was afraid that he would lose them by being kind and just even 
to a man of dark skin. I always pity from the bottom of my 
heart any man who feels that somebody else must be kept down 
and kept in ignorance in order that he may appear great by com- 
parison. It requires no courage for a strong man to keep a weak 
man down. Lincoln lives to-day because he had a courage that 
made him refuse to hate the man at the North or the man at the 
South when they did not agree with him. He had the courage, as 
well as the patience and foresight, to suffer the silence to be mis- 
understood, to be abused, to refuse to revile when reviled, because 
he knew if he was right the ridicule of to-day would mean the 
applause of to-morrow. He knew, too, that in some distant day 
our nation would repent of the folly of cursing its public servants 
while they live and blessing them only when they die. In this 
connection I cannot refrain from suggesting the question to the 



ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 325 

millions of voices raised to-day in his praise: "Why didn't you 
say it yesterday? Just that one word of gratitude, one word of 
appreciation would have gone so far in strengthening his heart and 
his hand." As we recall to-night his words and deeds we can do 
so with grateful hearts and strong faith in the future for the 
spread of righteousness. The civilization of the world is going 
forward, not backward. Here and there, for a little season, prog- 
ress may seem to halt or tarry by the wayside, or even slide back- 
wards, but the trend is ever onward and upward and will be so 
until some man invent and enforce a law to stop the progress 
of civilization. In goodness and in liberality the world moves 
forward. It moves forward beneficently, but it moves forward 
relentlessly. In the last analysis the forces of nature are behind 
the progress of the world, and those forces will crush into powder 
any group of humanity that resists this progress. 

As we gather here to-night, brothers all in common joy and 
thanksgiving for the life of Lincoln, can I not ask that you, the 
worthy representatives of seventy millions of white Americans, 
join heart and hand with the ten millions of black Americans, 
these ten millions who speak your tongue, profess your religion 
and have never lifted their voices or their hands except in defense 
of their country's honor and their country's flag, and with us 
swear eternal fealty to the traditions and to the memory of the 
sainted Lincoln? I repeat, may I not ask that you join with us 
and let us all here highly resolve that justice, good will and peace 
shall be the motto of our lives? And if this be true, my friends, 
Lincoln shall not have lived and died in vain. And, finally, 
gathering inspiration and encouragement from this hour and Lin- 
coln's life, I pledge to you and to the nation that my race, in so 
far as I can speak for it, which, in the past, whether in slavery 
or in freedom, whether in ignorance or intelligence, has always 



326 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



been true to the highest and best interests of this country, has al- 
ways been true to the stars and stripes, will strive so to deport 
itself that it will reflect nothing but the highest credit upon the 
whole people in the North and in the South. 



APPENDIX 



ADDRESS OF 



HON. BENJAMIN HARRISON 

Ex-President of the United States 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of New 
York City: Some bright member here has made my speech for 
me. There has been some strange incongruity in the places of 
these toasts to-night. It is not a pleasant assignment to follow 
the magnificent speech in behalf of the Republican party — detail- 
ing its achievements, bringing to our recollection the brilliant 
pathway in which it has walked — with a suggestion that there 
is to be some reform within it. I suppose the suggestion is hypo- 
thetical in its character. It was meant to bring to our attention 
to-night a suggestion that when the Republican party needs re- 
forming we will do it ourselves. It is a question that we have 
not debated in Indiana. I am, therefore^ unfamiliar with the 
arguments by which it should be supported. I must appeal, not 
to experience, but to philosophy, to defend the suggestion of my 
toast. I suppose it must be some question of table manners in 
the Republican party that is giving somebody some trouble. 
Nothing more serious than that. And, if that be true, then I sug- 
gest that the instructor who would reform our table manners 
must belong to the household. The unfriendly criticisms of the 
man across the street will not be accepted. Or, it may be that 
somebody is discontented with our tactics. If so, I suggest that 
he will not promote that reform by deserting to the enemy. He 
loses the point of influence when he does so. He may from his new 



330 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

position kill and destroy, but he cannot promote a reform in 
tactics. 

If there are barnacles on the old ship it is poor policy to scuttle 
her. let us put her in the dry-dock and scrape her hull! Or, 
better still, take her into fresh water and those impediments will 
drop oif of themselves, and the good old ship will yet show her 
heels again to the pirates that are pursuing her. The man who 
thanks God that he is not as other men are has lost the power 
of persuasion. He can't draw. And, therefore, it is that the 
reform of the Republican party must come from men who believe 
in it, who believe in its history, who believe in its power of 
growth and development, to throw off — not by the lopping of the 
axe, but by the inherent power of vital growth — everything that 
may attach itself to it that is unseemly or unsightly. The 
man who would succeed in life must put his shoulder under the 
load and not reach down his dainty and hesitating fingers toward 
the load, as some Republicans seem to have thought was the right 
policy in these latter years. The great body of the Republican 
party has always believed in pure methods and in pure men. It 
only needs, everywhere, that its primaries shall be open to all its 
voters. It only needs that every Republican in those foundations 
of political influence and action shall be free to bring to bear 
upon its policies and upon its nominations an individual influence. 

I do not know whether there are here, or in any of the Eastern 
States, any restraints or limitations upon this freedom. I do 
know with us in the West the Republican primaries are free 
and open to every man who can prove his fidelity to the party 
by his work at the polls. The influences that formed the Repub- 
lican party were eclectic in their nature. The call that brought 
them together was a call to sacrifice and not to spoils, and ever 
since, that has been the dominating power in the Republican 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT HARRISON 331 

party. The springs from which it drew its inspirations were 
found in the high hills of truth and duty. Who formed it ? Will 
some man name its architect? You may call to-night the roll of 
its first convention, but they were delegates who assembled there, 
and its platform was first written in the hearts of the people be- 
fore it was reported to the convention. The men of '56 and their 
worthy sons constitute the party to-day. I do not hesitate to say 
that the conscience — the patriotism — of this country is in the Re- 
publican party. It never responds with more alacrity, or with 
more magnificent force, than when some moral issue challenges 
its allegiance and its actions. 

It has been a party of progress. It has pioneered just as the 
settlers from these Eastern States in the earlier times cut out 
their pathways for emigration through the wilderness of the 
West; so has the Republican party, by its great leaders and its 
great following, marked out new paths in statesmanship and 
brought after them liberty and peace and an amazing prosperity. 

The Democratic party has been a party of obstruction. It has 
seemed to me that it was the boulder in this great stream of 
progress and prosperity which has been bearing us on — resisting, 
fretting, complaining and making progress itself only as it was 
borne along by the current that it resisted. I have seen some- 
times, upon a hot summer's day, on one of our dusty turnpikes in 
Indiana, a remarkable equipage, a poor lean horse with shuck 
collar and rope lines, dragging a creaking vehicle, whose wheels 
followed each other in this fashion, with a sallow, sad-faced man 
in the wagon, and a more sallow and more sad-faced woman walk- 
ing behind, and a yellow dog trotting along beneath, and as I 
have noticed that equipage dragging its weary, dusty way along 
upon the turnpike that had been made for it, amid cultivated 
fields, dotted with schoolhouses and with church spires, denot- 



332 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

ing and pointing the faith of the people who had the courage 
to open and settle the country — as I have seen it drawing its 
weary way along, I have said to myself: "Here comes the Dem- 
ocratic party!" 

I think these reforms must hegin and progress and end within 
the party, hecause I do not know of any political organization 
outside of it that has any reformative power to spare. Certainly 
not the Democratic party. I know that our mugwump friends 
think that they have a great deal of surplus reformative energy, 
but the trouble with those people is that they have put themselves 
up on the shelf like some dried cakes of Fleischman's compressed 
yeast, and they can have no power upon the mass that they should 
leaven, because they have ceased to have contact with it. 

I unite in the invitation, so gracefully extended to them by 
brother Hawley, to come back, to put the leaven in the lump, 
and let us have the benefit of it, and to abandon this silly notion 
that these dried cakes on the shelf can work the reform of the 
Republican party. 

And so it is. We will do our own work, like the vital force. 
The Republican party is opening its primaries, making free the 
sources of power and influence within it, and asking that where 
there has been a free and fair expression in convention that every 
man will give his allegiance and his support to the work which 
the convention does. 



4 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of New 
York : Having" heard now for more than three hours just and well- 
merited reflections upon the Democratic party, I have become sat- 
isfied that that party needs revision a good deal more than the 
tariff does ; and I am satisfied, too, that there will be no reduction 
of the surplus revenues now in the treasury, and the surplus rev- 
enues now collected, until the Democratic majority in the House 
of Representatives shall be reduced to a hopeless minority ; and to 
secure that, gentlemen of the New York club, is one of the great 
duties devolving upon the Republican party to-day. We have 
some very singular exhibitions of inconsistency among the people 
touching this question of the tariff, and the relation of the Con- 
gress of the United States to this important subject. We have 
petitions immediately after each Congress is elected^ from Demo- 
crats praying to be saved from the work of the Democratic Con- 
gress, and there are in the Ways and Means Committee to-night 
thousands of petitions from merchants, from laboring men, from 
farmers, from our fellow-citizens generally, who contributed to 
make the Fiftieth Congress Democratic — their petitions are now 
on file in the Committee of Ways and Means, praying to be saved 
from the work of their own hands. The way to save themselves 
from the necessity of petitioning against a Democratic Congress 
is not to elect one — that is the place to begin, and I would not 



334 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

assume to speak here to-night upon the subject of the tariff at all, 
and I am only going to speak a moment — I am going to take my 
watch out at the beginning; I say I would not assume to speak 
upon the subject of the tariff to-night except that there is a good 
deal of ignorance upon that subject everywhere, and a good deal 
of it in the Congress of the United States. A gentleman rose in 
his place on the floor of the House less than ten days ago, report- 
ing back a resolution for the investigation of the strikes in the 
anthracite regions of Pennsylvania, and the strike of Reading rail- 
road employees, and he confessed there in open House, that he had 
had to revise his speech; that he had originally prepared it to show 
that the iniquitous and oppressive tariff upon coal had been the 
cause of the strike, and that fortunately he had discovered that 
very morning that there was no tariff or duty upon anthracite 
coal at all. Now, I say, if there is so much want of knowledge 
upon that subject in the House of Representatives, among the 
gentlemen chosen to make your industrial laws, then I must as- 
sume that even in the great city and State of New York there may 
be some little want of information even among the Republicans. 
Now, these gentlemen have all talked to you a good deal about the 
tariff — the fact is, they have poached on me — all of them. They 
knew I was sick. I have been following Senator Sherman for 
three days, and I want to tell you it is as difficult to follow him 
as it was to follow his illustrious brother, old Tecumseh, during 
the war. He sweeps everything before him, and leaves nothing 
behind for those who follow. 

Now, what is the exact line of difference between the Demo- 
cratic and Republican parties upon this question of the tariff? 
The Democratic party is in favor of a revenue tariff — that is, a 
tax or a duty put upon foreign goods imported into the United 
States which do not compete with what we produce here. That 



ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 335 

is a revenue tariff ; a tariff which dismisses all other consideration 
save and except revenue, and selects out of the group of imported 
articles those which with the smallest tax will raise the largest 
amount of revenue, and upon those they put the duty. Now, that 
is a revenue tariff. What is a protective tariff ? It is a tax or duty 
put upon foreign merchandise and foreign products, whether of 
the field, or the factory, or the mine; upon those articles which 
come in competition with what we produce here; and the Repub- 
lican idea is to let everything from abroad, save and except lux- 
uries, come in free, if we cannot produce them in the United 
States, but put the tax or the duty upon the competing foreign 
product, and thus encourage our own industries and our own people 
in their chosen avocations; and that is the way we impose duties 
under the policy of the Republican party. The fact is, that it is 
the national policy, and has been from the foundation of the gov- 
ernment to collect revenues from import duties, and if we would 
to-day repeal all our internal revenue laws, or so much thereof 
as might be safely spared, the question of the surplus which now 
faces us would vex us no longer, and we could raise all the rev- 
enues needed for the current expenses and obligations of the gov- 
ernment easily from custom duties, and I believe that is what the 
Republican party ought to do. That is, to repeal so much of the 
internal revenue laws, or all if not needed, and let the protective 
tariff stand. Now, who are they, gentlemen of the Republican 
club, who complain against this iniquitous tariff? It is not the 
farmer; it is not the wage-earner; it is not the manufacturer; it 
is not the capitalist, whose money is invested in protected enter- 
prises; it is not the consumer. The complaint comes from some 
other source. I say to you here to-night that there is not a single 
American interest, or a single American citizen injured by the 
protective policy of the Republican party. Not one. Who in 



336 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

New York is complaining of our protective system? Importers 
— yes, and mugwumps. This agitation comes from the importers 
and from the foreign merchant and foreign manufacturers, as 
Henry Clay put it fifty-six years ago. He said the opposition came 
from British factors; came from the reviewers, came from the lit- 
erary speculators — just the kind of mugwumpery we have now. 
This agitation comes from the school, so-called, from the poets, 
whose poetry may be good enough, but whose political economy we 
must decline to accept. This opposition comes from the dilettante 
and the diplomat, from the men of fixed income — from those "who 
toil not, neither do they spin," "nor do they gather into barns" — 
following up the quotation. 

This agitation comes from that class of people — those men who 
want everything cheap but money; everything hard to get but 
coin; who prefer the customs^ the civilization of other countries 
to our own, and who think nothing so wholesome as that which is 
imported, whether it be merchandise or whether it be manners; 
and they want no tariff to prevent the free and unobstructed use 
of both. They want their clothes a little cheaper; they want 
their hats a little cheaper; they want their French 
boots a little cheaper. A college-bred American — not a 
New Yorker — whose inherited wealth had enabled him to 
gratify every wish of his heart, who had spent very much time 
abroad, said to me a few years ago, with a sort of listless satisfac- 
tion, that he had outgrown his country. What a confession ! Out- 
grown his country! Outgrown the United States! Think of it. 
I thought at the time it would have been truer had he said that 
his country had outgrown him, but he was in no condition of 
mind to have appreciated so patent a fact. He had had no con- 
nection with the progressive spirit of the country; he had con- 
tributed nothing to her proud position, and to the uplifting and 



ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 337 

welfare of her people; he had had no share in the onward march 
of the republic ; the busy, pushing American boy, of humble origin, 
educated at the public schools, had swept by him, as effort and 
energy always lead, and left the laggard behind. His inherited 
wealth was not invested in protected enterprises, nor was his 
heart located where it had any sympathy with the people with 
whom he was bred and reared. The fact is, his country had got 
so far ahead of him that he was positively lonesome and out of line 
of the grand procession. He was a free-trader, for he told me so, 
and he complained bitterly that the tarilf was a trammel upon 
the progressive men of the country, and that it severely handi- 
capped him. When I pushed him to say in what particular the 
tariff was a burden upon him as one of sixty millions of people, 
he raised his hand — which had never been touched by honest toil 
— which had never been soiled by labor, and said to me, "Mr. 
McKinley, these gloves come enormously high by reason of your 
tariff; the duty of 50 per cent, is actually added to their foreign 
cost, and it falls heavily upon us consumers." What answer could 
I make ? Life was too short. If I had pointed him to the trophies 
of the protective system he would not have understood them, and 
I could only gaze upon him in speechless silence, with a feeling 
of mingled pity, sorrow and contempt. And, gentlemen, I learned 
later that he became a mugwump. That was the newest manifes- 
tation of protest against our iniquitous tariff law. And, then, 
it was not a large company, nor a promiscuous one ; he had oppor- 
tunity of leadership in that organization, for all are leaders, and 
in the companionship of congenial spirits he found a restful 
home, a suitable asylum for the man who had outgrown his coun- 
try. There is another class of our citizens, and then I am through. 
What time do you close your performance? There is another 
class of our fellow-citizens who are free-traders; who have been 



338 TEE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

SO long" out of the country that they have so lost the aims and pur- 
poses of parties that they have not been able for twenty years to 
cast a vote which expressed their views, or even a fraction of 
them. I believe I quote correctly from Mr. Lowell. There have 
been no ideas; a perfect absence of ideas, for which these gentle- 
men could give their support or their suffrages for a period of 
twenty years. Think of that. The honest payment of the pub- 
lic debt against threatened repudiation — that was a great issue 
less than twenty years ago; you will remember the battle that 
we fought. That was beneath their thoughtful concern. The re- 
sumption of specie payment, led by the distinguished financier, 
Mr. Sherman, who sits at this table, who put our finances upon a 
solid foundation, and who made the old greenback lift its head 
in its pride and glory and declare that it knew "its redeemer 
liveth." That issue was wholly unworthy of these gentlemen. 
And not only have there been no ideas worthy of their support, 
but there have been no statesmen; there have been no representa- 
tive Americans ; there have been no typical American citizens since 
Lincoln was snatched from us — snatched by a cruel bravo from 
the theatre of things, to become a saint of nature in the Pantheon 
of kings, and there had been nobody like Lincoln until we got 
Cleveland. That is what Mr. Lowell said. There has been an ab- 
sence of representative Americans. If so, what a national hu- 
miliation! Grant, who closed his lips on the word victory at the 
Wilderness and refused to speak, but fought it out on that line 
and in that spirit until the final grand surrender at Appomattox 
Court House; General Sherman, who delved into the mountains of 
Cumberland, and made that magnificent march from Atlanta to 
the sea; that gallant little Irishman, Phil Sheridan, who never 
stopped to unbuckle his spurs from Harper's Ferry to the rebel 
rout at Cedar Creek, and who made the scene of Stonewall Jack- 



ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 339 

son's fame his field of glory — those three grand men, in the esti- 
mation of Mr. Lowell, belong to the lower type, or else have been 
entirely forgotten. We have come to regard those gentlemen as 
representative Americans, whose matchless courage and intense 
Americanism have saved America to the worlds the freest and best 
government to mankind, forever and forever. Garfield and Sum- 
ner, Wilson and "Wade, Hayes and Arthur — the latter your own 
fellow-citizen, who made one of the best Presidents we ever had — 
John Sherman and James G. Blaine, ex-Senator Warner Miller and 
Senator Evarts, and Senator Allison, any one of whom lightning 
may strike, God only knows whom ; and it does not make any dif- 
ference which one it does strike, for whichever one it does he will 
lead the grand old Republican party to victory, and this New York 
club will stand by him and follow him to glorious triumph. These 
gentlemen, mugwump gentlemen, cannot find any ideas that suit 
them; and I thank God it is so; I thank God that such ideas can- 
not thrive and live on free soil and among free men, and that it is 
so is the proudest monument of our intelligence, our civilization, 
and our patriotism. I wish I might talk the tariff to you to- 
night, but I cannot. I can only appeal to you to stand by the pro- 
tective system, and thus preserve the dignity and independence of 
American labor, and maintain the American schoolhouse, and the 
American home, and American possibility, to the present and to the 
future generations. I thank you, gentlemen. 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Ex-President of the United States 



Mr. President, and you, my fellow members of the Republican 
Club, and you, my fellow guests of the Republican Club, before I 
come to the matter which I have specially to lay before you to- 
night let me say a word on another subject. 

Prior to receiving the invitation to address this club on this day 
I had already accepted an invitation from one who is a guest with 
me to-night. General Howard, who was to give a dinner to-night 
in behalf of a cause which every man who believes in the memory 
of Abraham Lincoln, and who believes in the Union, should have 
at heart. 

On the last occasion when General Howard spoke with the great 
martyred President, President Lincoln showed himself deeply in- 
terested in the welfare of the people of East Tennessee, Kentucky 
and the Virginia mountains, and spoke so earnestly of their wel- 
fare that General Howard then pledged himself to do all he could 
to promote the welfare of those people among whom Lincoln was 
born, and in pursuance of that pledge he and those associated 
with him have established a group of schools, called the Lincoln 
Memorial University, at Cumberland Gap, for the industrial, nor- 
mal and academic training of those people. And the General has 
felt that he was in a peculiar way carrying out the purpose of 
Abraham Lincoln in dedicating himself to that work. 

I should not have felt at liberty to disregard his invitation to 



343 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 



me for any other invitation except that which I have accepted 
this evening. But when I told the General what this club meant 
to me, and what it meant to me to come as President of the 
United States among my fellow members here, the General at 
once released me from my promise to him. 

And now in what I have to say to you to-night I shall not strive 
to entertain you. I shall try to speak to you in a manner to ex- 
press what you and I, I believe, have most at heart. 

I do not — I will change the form of that sentence — you here 
are Republicans only secondarily — you are Americans first. And 
I speak to you to-night as a typical gathering of my fellow Amer- 
icans. Typical in the fact that we represent different creeds, 
that some of us were born here and some abroad, that some of 
us live here, some in the West and some in the South, but that we 
are each and all, every one of us, without regard to creed or 
birthplace, good Americans and nothing else. 

I speak to you, my old friends and companions, to you, with 
many of whom I have been intimately associated in political life 
from the time that I cast my first vote, to you the men of the 
great war to whom I looked up from the time I came to manhood, 
as setting the example for every young American to follow should 
ever another war call for the people of the United States, to one 
or two of you beside whom I had the good fortune to fight in a 
little v/ar — it wasn't a big war, but it was all the war there 
was. I speak to a body of men who have rendered in the past, 
end are rendering in the present, in the army, in the navy, on 
the bench, in the Senate, in private life, the kind of service which 
makes us content, and more than content to be American citizens. 
And, therefore, I intend to speak to you to-night, not as Repub- 
licans only, not as New Yorkers only, but as good Americans, good 
citizens of the United States, and, therefore, having deeply at 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 343 

heart the problems connected with any and all of our fellow- 
citizens in whatever part of the Union they live. 

In his second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long 
as the memory of this nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by 
saying : 

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on 
to finish the work we are in; . . . to do all which may achieve 
and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with 
all nations." 

Immediately after his re-election he had already spoken thus; 
mind you, gentlemen, speaking this within twenty-four hours 
after his re-election to the presidency in the midst of a civil war 
which, because of its extreme bitterness, would have corroded 
with a like bitterness the soul of any man less high-minded than 
he was. He said: 

"The strife of the election is but human nature practically ap- 
plied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case 
must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. 
In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, 
we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad, 
and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as 
philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to 
be revenged. . . . May not all having a common interest 
reunite in a common effort to serve our common country? For 
my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any 
obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here" — thus spoke 
Abraham Lincoln — "I have not willingly planted a thorn in any 
man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compli- 
ment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty 
God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as 



344 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction 
that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result. 

"May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with 
me in this same spirit toward those who have?" 

This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up 
the nation's wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce 
hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful 
passions provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all 
Americans should show now, when there is so little excuse for 
malice or rancor or hatred, when there is so little of vital con- 
sequence to divide brother from brother. 

Lincoln, himself a man of Southern birth, did not hesitate to 
appeal to the sword when he became satisfied that in no other 
way could the Union be saved, for high though he put peace he 
put righteousness still higher. He warred for the Union; he 
warred to free the slave; and when he warred he warred in 
earnest, for it is a sign of weakness to be half-hearted when blows 
must be struck. But he felt only love, a love as deep as the ten- 
derness of his great and sad heart, for all his countrymen alike 
in the North and in the South, and he longed above everything 
for the day when they should once more be knit together in the 
unbreakable bonds of eternal friendship. 

We of to-day, in dealing with all our fellow-citizens, white or 
colored, North or South, should strive to show just the qualities 
that Lincoln showed ; his steadfastness in striving after the right, 
and his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw 
the right less clearly than he did ; his earnest endeavor to do what 
was best, and yet his readiness to accept the best that was prac- 
ticable when the ideal best was unattainable ; his unceasing effort 
to cure what was evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 



345 



situation worse by any ill-judged or ill-timed effort to make it 
better. 

The great Civil War, in which Lincoln towered as the loftiest 
figure, left us not only a reunited country, but a country which 
has the proud right to claim as its own the glory won alike by 
those who wore the blue and by those who wore the gray; by 
those who followed Grant and by those who followed Lee, for 
both fought with equal bravery and with equal sincerity of con- 
viction, each striving for the light as it was given him to see 
the light, though it is now clear to all that the triumph of the 
cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the welfare 
of mankind. We are now one people, a people with failings which 
we must not blink, but a people with great qualities in which 
we have the right to feel just pride. 

All good Americans who dwell in the North must, because they 
are good Americans, feel the most earnest friendship for their 
fellow-countrymen who dwell in the South, a friendship all the 
greater because it is in the South that we find in its most acute 
phase one of the gravest problems before our people, the problem 
of so dealing with the man of one color as to secure him the rights 
that no man would grudge him if he were of another color. To 
solve this problem it is, of course, necessary to educate him to per- 
form the duties a failure to perform which will render him a curse 
to himself and to all around him. Mind that. And it is true 
of every one. In addition to rights in every republic there are 
correlative duties. And if the man, black or white, is not trained 
to do his duty he becomes necessarily a festering plague-spot in 
the whole body politic. 

Most certainly all clear-sighted and generous men in the North 
appreciate the difficulty and perplexity of this problem, sympathize 
with the South in the embarrassment of conditions for which 



346 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

she is not alone responsible, feel an honest wish to help her where 
help is practicable, and have the heartiest respect for those brave 
and earnest men of the South who, in the face of fearful difficul- 
ties, are doing all that men can do for the betterment alike of 
white and of black. 

The attitude of the North — I would always rather preach about 
the sins prevalent in the particular congregation I am addressing 
— the attitude of the North toward the negro is far from what 
it should be, and there is need that the North also should act in 
good faith upon the principle of giving to each man what is justly 
due him, of treating him on his worth as a man, granting him no 
special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor 
and the reward of labor. But the peculiar circumstances of the 
South render the problem there far greater and far more acute. 

Neither I nor any other man can say that any given way of 
approaching that problem will present in our time even an ap- 
proximately perfect solution, but we can safely say that there 
can never be such solution at all unless we approach it with the 
effort to do fair and equal justice among all men, and to demand 
from them in return just and fair treatment for others. Our 
effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color, equality 
of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law. 

And let me interject right here. It is forty years since the 
Civil War came to a close within a few weeks, it is nearly forty 
years, this anniversary of Lincoln's birthday, since the anniver- 
sary of Lincoln's death, and surely in all this land there should 
be no audience to whom such an appeal as that I am making 
should appeal more than to this which I am now addressing. 

As a people striving to shape our action in accordance with 
the great law of righteousness, we cannot afford to take part 
in or be indifferent to the oppression or maltreatment of any 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 347 



man who, against crushing disadvantages, has by his own in- 
dustry, energy, self-respect and perseverance struggled upward 
to a position which v^ould entitle him to the respect of his fel- 
lows if only his skin were of a different hue. 

Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrust- 
ing down instead of helping up such a man. To deny any man 
the fair treatment granted to others no better than he is to com- 
mit a wrong upon him — a wrong sure to react in the long run 
upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon 
■which Americans can act is that of "all men up," not that of 
"some men down." If in any community the level of intelli- 
gence, morality and thrift among the colored men can be raised, 
it is, humanly speaking, sure that the same level among the 
whites will be raised to an even higher degree, and it is no less 
sure that the debasement of the blacks will in the end carry with 
it an attendant debasement of the whites. 

The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of 
different ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor 
jeoparded; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter 
into the possession of true freedom — not false freedom — true free- 
dom, while the forward race is enabled to preserve unharmed the 
high civilization wrought out by its forefathers. The working 
out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not possible in 
off-hand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boons of free- 
dom, industrial efficiency, political capacity and domestic moral- 
ity. And that is a lesson that some of our good friends in this 
country need to learn in dealing with outside peoples. All the 
resolutions passed at all the anti-imperialist gatherings held in 
the United States since the close or the beginning of the war 
with Spain, have not availed for the welfare of the people of 
the Philippines one one-hundredth part as much as what was 



348 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

done by any one day's work of the present Secretary of War, Sec- 
retary Taft. Gentlemen, this meeting is all right. Nor is it only 
necessary to train the colored man; it is quite as necessary to 
train the white man, for on his shoulders rests a well-nigh un- 
paralleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem demanding 
the best thought, the utmost patience, the most earnest effort, the 
broadest charity — that is the word Lincoln used — charity toward 
all — the broadest charity of the statesman, the student, the phil- 
anthropist, of the leaders of thought in every department of our 
national life. The Church can be a most important factor in 
solving it aright. But above all else we need for its successful 
solution the sober, kindly, steadfast, unselfish performance of duty 
by the average plain citizen in his everyday dealings with his 
fellows. 

The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the 
ideal we should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day 
before we attain to it, and unless we show not only devotion to it, 
but also wisdom and self-restraint in the exhibition of that devo* 
tion, we shall defer the time for its realization still further. In 
striving to attain to so much of it as concerns dealing with men 
of different colors, we must remember two things. 

In the first place, it is true of the colored man, as it is true of 
the white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far 
more upon his own effort than upon the efforts of any outside 
friend. That applies to every man. There is not one of us that 
does not occasionally stumble, and shame to each of us if he does 
not stretch out a hand to help the brother who thus stumbles. 
Help him if he stumbles, but remember that if he lies down there 
is no use in trying to carry him. It will hurt both of you. 
Every vicious, venal or ignorant colored man is an even greater 
foe to his own race than to the community as a whole. The 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 349 

colored man's self-respect entitles him to do that share in the 
political work of the country which is warranted by his individual 
ability and integrity and the position he has won for himself. 
But the prime requisite of the race is moral and industrial up- 
lifting. 

Laziness and shiftlessness, these, and, above all, vice and crim- 
inality of every kind, are evils more potent for harm to the black 
race than all acts of oppression of white men put together. The 
colored man who fails to condemn crime in another colored man, 
who fails to co-operate in all lawful ways in bringing colored 
criminals to justice, is the worst enemy of his own people, as well 
as an enemy to all the people. Law-abiding black men should, for 
the sake of their race, be foremost in relentless and unceasing 
warfare against law-breaking black men. If the standards of 
private morality and industrial efficiency can be raised high 
enough among the black race, then its future on this continent 
is secure. The stability and purity of the home are vital to 
the welfare of the black race as they are to the welfare of every 
race. 

In the next place, the white man, who, if only he is willing, can 
help the colored man more than all other white men put to- 
gether, is the white man who is his neighbor, North or South. Let 
me interject here, it is a good thing to remember, that while it is 
occasionally proper to join in mass meetings and call attention to 
our neighbor's shortcomings, it is normally better to attend to our 
own. Each of us must do his whole duty without flinching, and 
if that duty is national it must be done in accordance with the 
immutable principles upon which our nation stands, but in en- 
deavoring each to be his brother's keeper, it is wise to remember 
that ordinarily each can do most for that brother who is his next- 
door neighbor. If we are sincere friends of the negro, let us 



350 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

each in his own locality show it by his action therein, and let us 
each show it also by upholding the hands of the white man in 
whatever locality, who is striving to do justice to the poor and 
the helpless, to be a shield to those whose need for such a shield is 
great. 

The heartiest acknowledgments are due to the ministers, the 
judges and law officers, the grand juries, the public men, and the 
great daily newspapers in the South, who have recently done 
such effective work in leading the crusade against lynching in 
the South ; and I am glad to say that during the last three months 
the returns, as far as they can be gathered, show a smaller num- 
ber of lynchings than for any other three months during the last 
twenty years. Those are rather striking figures and I take a cer- 
tain satisfaction in them in view of some of the gloomy fore- 
bodings of last summer. Let us uphold in every way the hands 
of the men who have led in this work, who are striving to do all 
their work in this spirit. I am about to quote from the address 
of the Right Reverend Robert Strange, Bishop Coadjutor of North 
Carolina, as given in "The Southern Churchman" of October 8, 
1904— October 8th last. 

The bishop first enters an emphatic plea against any social in- 
termingling of the races, a question which must, of course, be 
left to the people of each community to settle for themselves, as 
in such a matter no one community — and indeed no one indi- 
vidual — can dictate to any other; always provided that in each 
locality men keep in mind the fact that there must be no confus- 
ing of civil privileges with social intercourse. Civil law cannot 
regulate social practices. Society, as such, is a law unto itself, 
and will always regulate its own practices and habits. Full recog- 
nition of the fundamental fact that all men should stand on an 
equal footing as regards civil privileges in no way interferes with 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 351 

recognition of the further fact that all reflecting men of both 
races are united in feeling that race purity must be maintained. 
The bishop continues (I am quoting what this Southern bishop 
says) : 

"What should the white men of the South do for the negro? 
They must give him a free hand, a fair field and a cordial god- 
speed, the two races working together for their mutual benefit 
and for the development of our common country. He must have 
liberty, equal opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, 
to build his home. He must have justice, equal rights, and pro- 
tection before the law. He must have the same political priv- 
ileges; the suffrage should be based on character and intelligence 
for white and black alike. He must have the same public ad- 
vantages of education; the public schools are for all the people, 
whatever their color or condition. The white men of the South 
should give hearty and respectful consideration to the exceptional 
men of the negro race, to those who have the character, the abil- 
ity and desire to be lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, lead- 
ers of thought and conduct among their own men and women. We 
should give them cheer and opportunity to gratify every laudable 
ambition, and to seek every innocent satisfaction among their own 
people. Finally, the best white men of the South should have 
frequent conferences with the best colored men, where, in frank, 
earnest and sympathetic discussion, they might understand each 
other better, smooth difficulties, and so guide and encourage the 
weaker race." 

Surely we can all of us join in expressing our substantial agree- 
ment with the principles thus laid down by this North Carolina 
bishop, this representative of the Christian thought of the South. 

I am speaking on the occasion of the celebration of the birth- 
day of Abraham Lincoln, and to men who count it their peculiar 



352 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

privilege that they have the right to hold Lincoln's memory dear 
and the duty to strive to work along the lines that he laid down. 
We can pay most fitting homage to his memory hy doing the tasks 
allotted to us in the spirit in which he did the infinitely greater 
and more terrible tasks allotted to him. 

Let us be steadfast for the right, but let us err on the side of 
generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those 
who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let 
us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield 
from wrong the humble, and let us likewise act in a spirit of 
the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all 
our fellow countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness, 
but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of lo- 
cality than it does of class or of creed, a spirit which is resolute- 
ly bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and 
which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and 
greater throughout the ages for evermore. 

I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I be- 
lieve that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will 
in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. 
I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty 
people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people. 
Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and 
not worse, and this is as true of one part of the country as it is 
of another. I believe in the Southerner as I believe in the North- 
erner. I claim the right to feel pride in his great qualities and 
in his great deeds exactly as I feel pride in the great qualities and 
deeds of every other American. For weal or for woe we are knit 
together, and we shall go up or go down together, and I believe 
that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward in- 
stead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith 



ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 353 

in the generosity, the courage, the resolution and the common 
sense of all my countrymen. 

The Southern States face difficult problems, and so do the North- 
ern States. Some of the problems are the same for the entire 
country. Others exist in greater intensity in one section, and yet 
others exist in greater intensity in another section. But in the 
end they will all be solved, for fundamentally our people are 
the same throughout this land, the same in the qualities of heart 
and brain and hand which have made this republic what it is in 
the great to-day; which will make it what it is to be in the 
infinitely greater to-morrow. I admire and respect and believe 
in and have faith in the men and women of the South as I admire 
and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women 
of the North. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners, 
Easterners and Westerners, can best prove our fealty to the na- 
tion's past by the way in which we do the nation's work in the 
present, for only thus can we be sure that our children's children 
shall inherit Abraham Lincoln's single-hearted devotion to the 
great unchanging creed that "righteousness exalteth a nation." 



i 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN 

Lincoln's Vice-President 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club : I thank 
you for this cordial greeting. It stirs the blood of age and makes 
the pulses leap. But I am too sensible that it is a demonstration 
belonging not to me, but to the great and important events in 
which I was a very humble participator. Men are as unimportant 
in crises like those through which we have passed as the merest 
atom of dust that is borne away upon the bosom of the wind. It 
is principle, everlasting and undying principle, that commands 
and challenges our attention and our respect. 

Mr. President, I fear there is a grave misunderstanding. I 
came here with what I supposed an express understanding that 
I should not be called upon to speak. My age alone should excuse 
me. Yes, Mr. President, young in years while the heart shall 
throb. But, alas, the limbs will tell you another story. 

I came from my home to be with you to-night to do homage 
to the memory of one of the greatest men the world has ever 
known. I left my home at the hazard of my health, that I might 
testify by my presence here in joining with you in paying a 
tribute to the memory and the worth of Abraham Lincoln. 

It was for that I came, and not to talk. But I had a thought 
in my mind which it was my purpose to suggest to this noble club, 
and I will do it. We speak of Washington as the Father of his 
Country, and we know that by his Fabian policy, the liberties and 



356 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

the independence of these colonies were finally secured. We know 
the wisdom of George Washington aided in laying deep and strong 
the foundations upon which our government rests. We know that 
he aided in launching the old ship of state upon that foundation 
that has outridden all the storms in the past, as, in God's name, we 
trust it will outride all the storms in the future. All honor then 
to George Washington and the commemoration of his name. 

I think, Mr. President, that you have in your by-laws a pro- 
vision that this day shall he saved to the memory of the birth of 
Mr. Lincoln. Do you remember that we have incorporated in the 
statutes of our country, one that makes the birthday of George 
Washington a national birthday? It rests upon no separate ar- 
ticles of political organisation, but it rests upon the everlasting 
law. I have come here to-night, and if I have any power, I would 
ask it with all the force I can urge, that you join with me in mak- 
ing the birthday of Abraham Lincoln a national birthday. That, 
in addition to participating v/ith you on this occasion, has brought 
me here. They are equally entitled to have their birthdays com- 
memorated. Every age has produced its great and distinguished 
men, the names of some of whom shall never die. In art, in lit- 
erature, in arms, in the mechanic arts^ in everything that serves 
to aid and elevate the people, the world has produced its great 
and distinguished men. Abraham Lincoln was not an educated 
man, but he was a learned man. The world was the school in 
which Abraham Lincoln graduated. It was not confined to the 
walls of your colleges and your higher schools. He was educated 
in the great school of the world. His professors, his tutors, were 
the lesson of humanity which belonged to the world. Such was 
the school in which Abraham Lincoln was educated. Why, that 
little gem of a speech which he made at Gettysburg will be taught 
by our mothers to their children, and it will stand as a gem of 



ADDRESS OF HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN 357 

English literature in all the ages that shall come. It was a little 
speech that spoke from the man who was educated in the schools 
of the world, and it came closer home to the hearts and the fire- 
sides of our people. Yes, read carefully the Life of Lincoln by 
Nicolay and Hay. They give you a better idea of the early train- 
ing and the early schooling of that eminent man, and you can 
learn there how close he was to the hearts of all our people. Was 
it an education equal to that other school? I will not stop to 
discuss the question. Undoubtedly the blending of the two would 
be the desideratum, but which is the better, I stand not here to 
declare. 

One was an education that brought the man home directly to 
the great mass of our people. They felt it. They felt his words, 
that would have been cold as an icicle dropping purely from the 
educated man of the schools. 

Now, shall we not, good Republicans of this club — and I am glad 
to meet every one of them — although I am old in years, time 
has not staled, or custom cloyed, the interest that I feel in sound 
Republicanism. But, alas, I am grieved at some of the doings of 
our National Legislature. They cast a shade of sadness over my 
daily life, when I witness the treachery, the dishonesty, and the 
degraded condition in which some of our Senators stand. 

Now, Mr. President, the time has come when all the bitter as- 
perities that existed against Mr. Lincoln have ceased. The world 
will say that his birthday should be a national holiday. Had I 
remained in the Senate to this hour, it would have been done be- 
fore now. You are a strong, a vigorous, an active, an intelligent, 
and purely a Republican party. Now, you can put that wheel in 
motion which shall roll on to success. See to it that the birthday 
of Abraham Lincoln is made a national holiday. Perhaps I may 
say that mainly to utter those few words I was induced to come 



358 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

here. Remember, I can see the hoys in blue as they tread their 
solitary rounds in their camping grounds, and I can hear a voice, 
gentle, but potent to my ear, that commands me from them to 
regard the memory of Abraham Lincoln as they would have 
done had God in his inscrutable wisdom changed our relative 
positions. 



P 28 ms 



